A study published in the British Medical Journal’s special Christmas issue, which is packed with quirky studies, has discovered that mustaches still outnumber women in medical power positions. The study has a serious topic: ‘Sexism in science and medicine’.

Such mustaches are quite rare, as the researchers cited reports that less than 15% men in the United States sport such facial hair.

The researchers wrote in the study that they have defined a mustache as the visible hair presence on the upper cutaneous lip. This included both stand alone mustaches and also mustaches in combination with other facial hair.

They added, “Department leaders with facial hairstyles that did not include hair on the upper lip (for example, Mutton Chops, Chin Curtain) were considered not to have a mustache. We evaluated each leader for the presence of facial hair regardless of sex”.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Berkeley Law and the University of California San Francisco have published the cross-sectional analysis of medical leaders.

They pointed out that there was a time when women were scarce in medical schools, but have made up nearly 50% of most classes for sufficiently long that leadership positions at health institutions must be looking a bit more diverse by now. They said that however, the US’ world of academic medicine, only 38% of full-time faculty, 16% of deans, and 21% of full professors are women.

In the study, they concluded that in the US moustachioed individuals notably outnumber women as leaders of medical departments. According to them every department and institution must attempt for a mustache index =1.