The year of Karen

A few months ago on December 27, 2020, Julia Carrie Wong wrote an article for the British daily newspaper The Guardian declaring that 2020 is the "The Year of Karen".  You may have watched M&M's Super Bowl LV ad (the $5 million campaign is called M&M's Bring Peace to the World) in which a man hands a woman a bag of M&M's while apologizing for "mansplaining" (and then, of course, proceeding to explain "mansplaining to the woman), as well as other examples of how arguments and disharmony are resolved with M&M's.  One woman even hands a bag to another woman, saying, "I'm sorry I called you Karen."  Of course, then Karen replies, "That's my name," leading the other woman to hand over another bag of M&M's while saying, "I'm sorry your name is Karen."

What's all the fuss about Karen?  If you don't know (and forgive me if I am "mansplaining" here), the name "Karen" has become a pejorative term to describe any woman who seems to be self-entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what would be considered normal.  The term is often used to describe a white woman who uses her "white privilege" to demand her way.  The term has been linked with anti-vaccination beliefs, prejudice, microaggression, and overt racism, and apparently there is even a characteristic hair-cut associated with this stereotype called the "Can I speak to your manager?" haircut (see the description for that here).  In the aforementioned article by Julia Carrie Wong in The Guardian, the "Karen" meme has helped change the way that America talks about racisim.  She writes, "The image of a white woman calling police on Black people put the lie to the myth of racial innocence."

As it turns out, there are other pejorative uses of both male and female proper nouns.  For example, Drs. Molly Carnes and JudyAnn Bigby wrote an article in the Journal of Women's Health in 2007 defined what they called "Jennifer fever" as it pertains to academic medicine.  They actually built upon a concept first defined by Barbara Gordon in a 1988 book, Jennifer Fever: Older Men / Younger Women.  At the time of Gordon's book, "Jennifer" was the most popular girl's name at the time.  Gordon used the name to describe younger women who attract the attention of older men, frequently at the expense of neglecting older women their own age (who Gordon called, "Janets").  Carnes and Bigby similarly describe the problem where mid-career male faculty in academic medicine (who they call, "Daves") mentor, coach, and help develop younger female faculty.  Unfortunately, this level of mentorship and career assistance is short-lived.  Once the female faculty members get to the point where they compete with the "Daves" (in other words, once they reach the "Janet" stage), they are frequently abandoned and left on their own.

The "Jennifer" and "Janet" problem is real.  According to a follow-up article by Drs. Anna Kaatz and Carnes, while women and men enter academic medicine at roughly the same percentage (and in my own specialty, pediatrics, more women are entering the field than men), women account for only 32% of associate professors, 20% of full professors, 14% of department chairs, and 11% of deans at U.S. medical schools.  As another article points out, academic medicine is "making mid-career women physicians invisible."

There's even more pejorative names (see, for example, the Matilda effect  which follows loosely something known as the Matthew effect), but in the interest of your time, I will just refer you to the links.  Unfortunately, the "Matilda effect" (in which male colleagues take credit for discoveries made by females) is also alive and well in academic medicine.  So, as we have moved on from Women's History Month in March, what can we do to prevent "Jennifer" from becoming "Janet" or make sure that "Matilda" gets the proper credit that she deserves?  

As one article emphasizes, mentorship is not enough.  Mentorship is incredibly important, but sponsorship is just as important, maybe even more so.  "Sponsorship" is defined as "active support by someone appropriately placed in the organization who has significant influence on decisionmaking processes or structures and who is advocating for, protecting, and fighting for the career advancement of an individual."  I like to think of "sponsorship" as "mentorship on steroids"!  Sponsors are often placed higher in the organizational hierarchy.  As such, these individuals have already "arrived" or "made it to the top" and will feel less threatened by the academic success and promotion of mid-career female faculty.

There are myriad articles on mentorship in academic medicine.  However, there are surprisingly few articles on sponsorship.  Maybe now is the time to change that.  I wish it could be as easy as handing out bags of M&M chocolate candy, but it's not.  It's going to take dedicated effort, commitment, and dedication to address the gender disparities in academic medicine.  Some day, maybe we will look back on the "Year of Karen" and be able to recognize that this was the time when things finally started to change.