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Are We There Yet? Equity in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Application Process | ATS Scholar
Using text analysis technology, the authors report that LORs for female applicants in the Midwest, South, and Northeast United States were more supportive than for male applicants when adjusted for demographic characteristics, accomplishments, and LOR author gender (surmised via pronouns listed on publicly available search engines). For institutions in the East and West, there were no applicant sex–based differences in LOR supportiveness. LORs were significantly longer for female applicants in programs in the South and Midwest. Secondary analysis revealed that associate professor and professor LOR authors wrote longer and stronger LORs across most regions regardless of applicant gender. Overall, the study confirms that sex-based differences in LORs persist and newly demonstrates that these differences vary across the country by institutional region and author rank.
