The quest for gender equality in healthcare extends beyond representation; it encompasses the need to address disparities faced by women of color, especially in medicine and dentistry.

I have the pleasure to serve as the chief health equity officer of a nonprofit think tank led by a female physician of color, and our overarching mission is to create a healthcare system that works for all. Critical to the future of our healthcare system are academic training centers for medicine and dentistry that are not only intentional but also invested in developing a more representative and empowered workforce.

In this article, I'm going to dive deeper into one part of the issue we're currently seeing—the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic women in medicine and dentistry—and speak to some ideas for minimizing this gap.

Research highlights the underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic women in medical and dental schools.

In the 2022-2023 academic year, while women represented 55.6% of medical school enrollees (matriculants), Black and Hispanic women composed nearly 10% and 7%, respectively. In dental schools, "women made up 56% of first-year dental students in 2021," Black women composed just 7.3% of the entering class, with Hispanic women constituting 10.7%.

Moreover, women of color in medicine and dentistry face challenges in obtaining academic leadership positions. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), while women make up 41% of full-time faculty at medical schools, they represented less than 25% of tenured professors at U.S. medical schools in 2021. In dentistry, the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) reported that Black female faculty comprised only 2.7%, while Hispanic female faculty accounted for 4.6% of full-time dental school faculty as of the 2018-2019 academic year.

When it comes to the pay gap in medicine, we know that, on average, female physicians of all races earn 26% less than their male counterparts. What we do not have is sufficient and more recent disaggregation of that data by race. We were able to identify a clearer picture of disparities in dentistry, where Black and Hispanic female dentists earn considerably less than white male dentists. Oral and maxillofacial surgery, a recognized specialty in dentistry often practiced by dual-degreed physician-dentists, showed the widest gap in pay among specialists.

Read the full article about health equity by Kaz Rafia at Forbes.