Introduction

We read the finding by Athanasiou and colleagues with great interest.1 Great strides have been made on equal involvement of men and women in academic and biomedical fields. For medical programmes, women now make up more or less half of the classes in the USA,2 Australia3 and New Zealand.3 Figures are similar for students of higher research degrees (eg, PhD).2

Despite the seemingly equal interest in medicine and research from both sexes, combining the two has not enjoyed such a clear-cut pattern. While some reports found women to participate in research during medical school as much as, if not more than, men,4 several studies have highlighted the noticeable lack of female physician-scientists compared with their male counterparts.2 ,5

This report aims to shed light on the situation in Australian and New Zealand universities. It also offers reasons for apparent discrepancies in the literature and suggests solutions to tackle current challenges.