Earlier this year, Dr. Anna Wåhlin made headlines for sending a $3.6 million submarine beneath the ice shelf of Thwaites glacier to study—for the first time ever—how warming Antarctic waters are contributing to glacial melting, rising sea levels, and climate change (1). Following this historic achievement came a series of articles and podcasts detailing not only the importance of her team’s findings, but also the significance that she (a woman!) led this scientific mission. Indeed, Dr. Wåhlin is only the third woman in Sweden to obtain a PhD in oceanography; she named the submarine after a Norse goddess, Ran, to acknowledge the dearth of women in her field. Many find it disappointing that, in an era of remote Antarctic dives, directed evolution to engineer enzymes, and CRISPR-mediated genome editing, the fact that women are leading these collaborative scientific efforts remains an accomplishment in and of itself.

The persistent underrepresentation of women among high-achieving scientists extends to the field of clinical investigation. In 2018, women constituted only 29% of US medical school faculty holding MD-PhD or other dual doctoral degrees (2) and 27% of the members of the National Academy of Medicine (3). Recent public attention to egregious episodes of sexual harassment in other fields has heightened interest in understanding and mitigating the influence of sexual harassment on the careers of women in academic medicine. Indeed, in a comprehensive landmark report released last summer by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), academic medicine was found to have the highest incidence of harassment of any field studied—with female medical students 220% more