Underrepresented: The Myth of "The Confidence Ga?" and Strategies for Near Peer Leaders to Promote Equity for Women in Medicine

Women remain chronically underrepresented in medicine despite evidence highlighting their strengths and benefits when it comes to patient care. Chief residents have the unique role of supporting female residents in professional development. The "confidence gap" is a frequently described and commonly accepted theory that female workers lack the self-confidence of their male peers. It is thought to be one of the reasons why women are passed over for leadership roles, promotions, and raises; previous literature has focused the solution on strategies to improve confidence, which fails to recognize the positive qualities that come along with it. We propose that those qualities are actually necessary and lacking in medicine and review evidence that highlights how, with those qualities, female physicians outperform males in different realms of patient care. We propose systems-based strategies for near peer leaders to promote women in achieving their career goals.