A Women's Experience as a Medical Professional

Source:www.hopkinsmedicine.org

While women have made many significant gains as medical professionals in the past century, women continue to have completely different experiences than their male counterparts as physicians. From academic medicine to practicing medicine it is a recurring trend that women are underrepresented in many fields of medicine and may face unfair bias in regards to their gender. However, despite the chronic underrepresentation and trends of discrimination, a significant amount of women have had astounding careers as physicians. The hardships and setbacks that women face as physicians appear not to be debilitating to the careers of most women in the medical field.

According to the article “Medical Professions: The Status of Women and Men”, the Center for Research on Gender in Professions illustrates how women have chronically been underrepresented in academic medicine. While women do face underrepresentation in other facets of the medical profession such as high paying specialities, women's underrepresentation in the academic facet seems to be the most detrimental. As the vast majority of medical school deans and professors are men, there is a scarcity for change to be made. Women are predominantly taught by male professors which means that the women in medical school are not experiencing the perspectives of women teachers. Similarly, as men in medical school are being taught by male professors, they are not experiencing the perspectives of women in medicine either. This is detrimental to the advancement of women in medicine as it is essential that women teach the younger generations of both male and female physicians that changes need to be made in regards to gender advantages and disadvantages.

Female physicians also face underrepresentation in specialties which pay more. While it is unclear as to if the specialties that women are drawn to pay less naturally, or if they pay less because women are working in them, it is clear that there is a pay gap between women and men. Accordingly, the article “Gender in Medicine-- an Issue For Only Women? A Survey of Physician Teachers’ Gender Attitudes” illustrated a study done by Gunilla Risberg, Eva E Johansson, Goran Westman and Katarina Hamberg which indicated that female physicians tend to have different types of relationships with their patients.  On average, female physicians tend to spend more time with patients building relationships and emotional support. Childbearing also plays a role in the opportunities that female physicians receive, often times affecting females negatively. According to the article “ Balancing it All: Women and Medicine” The National Women’s Health Network female physicians often face harassment from peers as well as superiors for choosing to become mothers. However, despite many setbacks in the careers of female physicians, there have been many females who have had extremely successful careers in medicine.