Being a Mother and Physician: What You Need To Know

Source: www.hghtherapy.com

Women who immerse themselves in the medical profession often plan on having a family in addition to a career as a physician. While many women have navigated and balanced these two full time “professions” before, childbearing and a career as a physician often don’t compliment each other as women are put at a disadvantage both in their familial and professional life when they choose to raise a family. The National Women’s Health Network explains how motherhood can often be a disadvantage to female physicians in “Balancing it All: Women and Medicine”.

There is not good time to have a child as a physician: From medical school to residency to becoming a attending physician, physician’s schedules are jam packed with a scarcity of time off. In medical school, students generally are not allotted big breaks. First year students are often granted their summer off after their first year of training, however the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year of medical school are filled with exams and residency interviews. Having a baby at any of these times would increase a student’s risk of dropping out. Directly after medical school, students go directly to being residents for 3-7 years. According to the American Medical Women’s Association, half all women physicians who get pregnant have their first child within these years of residency. However, many residency programs have a lack of maternity leave policies and mothers are often harassed by their peers and superiors for needing time off or for needing others to cover their shifts.

Female Physicians Face Harassment For Choosing to Become Mothers: According to The National Women’s Health Network, women often need their shifts covered by fellow physicians, and this causes resentment among peers. Women who have become mothers not only face backlash from their peers, but their superiors as well. Attending physicians are predominantly male, who are less likely to emphasize. Furthermore, women who have children during their residencies are less likely to be considered for coveted positions like Chief Resident. Mothers in the medical profession are put at a disadvantage in regards to their colleagues attitudes about them, thus they are given less opportunities.

Future Research: Why women dont participate in academic medicine as much as men? Do women have a hard time participating in certain specialities?

Women are Underrepresented in All Aspects of the Medical Profession

Source: www.learnvest.com

Statistically, women in the medical profession have a completely different experience than men in the same profession. On the basis of gender, women are get less pay and are underrepresented in specialties which pay more. The Center For Research On Gender in the Professions in “Medical Professions: The Status of Women and Men” illustrate how women are underrepresented and face disparities in all aspects of the medical field including education, medical practice and academic medicine.

As far as education goes, the percentage of medical degrees earned by women has increased significantly. In 1952, only 5% of medical degrees were earned by women, however, in 2011 this number had risen to 48%. This rise may be due to the increase in women’s rights in the past few decades, as well as increasing or more diverse attitudes towards women. In my opinion, it seems as time goes on society becomes more liberalized, which may contribute to people’s increased attitudes towards the rights of women over time. Similarly, more and more women continue to shy away from domestic work which also contributes to why so many women are now earning medical degrees and participating in other professions as well.

While the increased amount of women participating in the medical profession is beneficial to society in a multitude of ways, how women are treated in this profession does not reflect this. Based on statistics, women are plagued by a gender pay gap and segregation of specialties. Women are less likely to have ownership or part ownership of a practice, and are also less less likely in comparison to men to be surgeons. In 2004, 59% of male physicians owned at least part of a practice compared to only 41% of women. Furthermore, women have the highest representation in the pediatrics field at 55%, however this is one of the lowest paying fields of medicine. In relation to this, in 2005 women represented only “ 6% of (…)orthopedic, thoracic, urological and neurological surgeons” (Medical Professions). While there has been a rise of women in the medical profession over the past few decades, women have not yet reached true equality and representative equity in comparison to men. It is interesting to me how women end up in lower paying specialties and I would like to further investigate why this occurs.

Lastly, women are consistently underrepresented in academic medicine. In 2007, only 14 out of 124 medical school deans were women, Similarly, as the deans are picked by department chairs, only 10 women were medical school department chairs. Furthermore, the majority of medical school professors are men. This disparity of women at the academic level may be the most threatening to women in the medical profession. If more women were represented in academic medicine, more change could be brought to the minds of medical students in regards to their attitudes towards women in the medical field. A lack of female professors means that both men and women are lacking the female perspective in their medical studies which could be detrimental to how the medical profession progresses in regards to female equality.

Future Research: Why women end up in specialties that pay less. Or do the specialties just pay less because it is women dominated? How does childbearing affect a woman's medical career?

Disparity of Oportunites for Women in the Medical Field

Source: wordpress.com

Women in the medical field are consistently discriminated against in the medical field. From salary to the number of research opportunities available, it is clear that being a women in the medical profession is a disadvantage. A number of studies done by Gunilla Risberg, Eva E Johansson, Goran Westman and Katarina Hamberg are outlined in “Gender in Medicine-- an Issue For Only Women? A Survey of Physician Teachers’ Gender Attitudes” (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC305344/) illustrate the effect that gender has on the experience and opportunities of women in the medical field. The investigations in this article have been published by The National Library of Medicine. As what I seek to understand is the importance and effects that gender has on salaries and opportunities in the medical profession, the studies which I proceed to talk about in relationship to my topic have put into numbers and statistics the experiences that women have in the medical profession.

The first study sought to identify “gender differences and gender bias in different fields of academic and clinical medicine”.The conductors of this study sent out questionnaires to physicians involved in educating medical students at a Swedish medical school. The questionnaire had questions aimed at receiving data determining the perceived importance of gender in relationships with others in the medical field. The results were as follows: “A higher proportion of women than men assessed gender as important in professional relationships. Those who assessed very low were all men while both men and women were represented among those with high ratings”(Risberg, Johansson, Westman, Hamberg). According to the data in the article, women were more likely to think that  gender affected their professional relationships. In my opinion I hypothesize that this is because women are more conscious of their own gender because of historical sexism against women. The current prominence of feminist movements also causes women to put more weight on how their gender affects their relationships with others.

The second investigation sought to explore why gender bias has increased in the medical field throughout recent years. It was noted that “female and male physicians differ when comparing time and communication pattern. Female physicians have longer encounters and include more partnership building and emotional support”(Risberg, Johansson, Westman, Hamberg). This may contribute to why female and male physicians may have different types of relationships with patients and may be perceived differently by colleagues as well as patients. Accordingly, also indicated was the fact that female physicians “often work in less prestigious fields than men”(Risberg, Johansson, Westman, Hamberg). Similarly, it was also indicated that female doctors face discrimination regarding research opportunities and are significantly underrepresented in academic medicine. This study is extremely indicative of the fact that women are in fact discriminated against in the medical field.

Future Research: I hope to discover why women have a disparity of opportunities in academic medicine, and if any other types of opportunities for women in the medical profession are limited. 

Genders Effects on Salaries and Opportunities in the Medical Field

Source:http://www.jpma.org

• Briefly explain why you are interested in studying your topic:  I am interested in my topic because I have been thinking about being a doctor and going to medical school after college. Obviously, becoming a doctor takes a lot of hard work and I want to be 100% positive that I am up to the challenge. This topic intrigues me because I want to investigate all aspects of being a medical professional so that I can make an educated decision after college.

• The overall question I plan on answering by the end of the project: How does gender affect salaries & opportunities in the medical field?

• Sub questions I will need to answer in order to answer the overall question: What are the average salaries of doctors, depending on the field they are in? How does salary affect opportunities? How do opportunites affect salary? How much less do women get paid as medical professionals? Why do women get paid less and men more?

• My plan of research (what specific Library Databases, specific websites, names of authors, people, etc. will I pursue to find the answers to the questions above): Databases: Science Research Center, SIRS knowledge source, Career Cruising, ProQuest, Gale Professional Collection,

TEST BLOG POST

TEST BLOG POST