TY - JOUR T1 - Women leaders: transforming the culture in cardiology JF - Open Heart JO - Open Heart DO - 10.1136/openhrt-2022-001967 VL - 9 IS - 1 SP - e001967 AU - Parham Eshtehardi AU - Renee P Bullock-Palmer AU - Katia Bravo-Jaimes AU - Biykem Bozkurt AU - Sharmila Dorbala AU - Linda D Gillam AU - Cindy L Grines AU - Roxana Mehran AU - Jennifer H Mieres AU - Toniya Singh AU - Nanette K Wenger Y1 - 2022/02/01 UR - http://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/1/e001967.abstract N2 - Hellen Taussig persisted despite dyslexia, deafness and gender discrimination. In 1924, she was one of the 10 women accepted to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and later led development of the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas shunt and founding of paediatric cardiology. In 1965, she became the first woman president of the American Heart Association (AHA), 41 years after its foundation. More than 50 years later, in 2020, a truly historic moment took place when 10 women were elected as presidents of major cardiovascular societies. The field of cardiology has been traditionally dominated by men. Despite women’s significant contributions to patient care and research in cardiology, their disproportionate under-representation compared with other fields of medicine has led to a significant gap in recruitment and promotion. This, however, appears to be slowly changing as the heightened awareness of the need to attract more women to cardiology has led to a slight increase in the number of women in cardiology (WIC). The WIC committees of AHA and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) have played critical roles in leading these efforts to address gender inequities in cardiology, aiming to create an inclusive and diverse workforce. We interviewed some women leaders in cardiology and asked them about the gaps and barriers as well as the opportunities to overcome these inequities to strengthen the representation of WIC.According to the 2020 Physician Specialty Data Report, only 15% of adult cardiologists are women, and cardiology is ranked 39th of 47 specialties in the percentage of women. While there has been a significant increase in the percentage of women in internal medicine subspecialties, cardiology had one of the lowest growth rates. In 2016, only 21% of cardiology fellows were women as opposed to 60% of rheumatology fellows.1 Only 4% of interventional cardiologists in 2016 were women. A survey of … ER -