The Changing Face of Medicine: Women Doctors and the Evolution of Health Care in America
... Mirroring the success of the women's movement by opening up opportunities for women in previously male-dominated fields, the 1970s marked the first entrance of significant numbers of women into medicine (Boulis and Jacobs 2008). As of 2005, women comprised close to half of medical students, an increase from 11 percent in 1970 (Boulis and Jacobs 2008:2). ...
... For example, in 2003, 70.8 percent of medical doctors training in obstetrics and gynecology were women, while 76.2 percent of medical doctors training in general surgery were men (Brotherton et al. 2004). Boulis and Jacobs (2008) describe gendered patterns of medical specialization as being less a pattern of female "ghettos," and more a function of persistent "male bastions" (112). That is, certain specializations, such as surgery, have consistently remained male-dominated, while others have experienced increased gender integration since the 1970s. ...
... Given our access to the medical specialization plans in this unique dataset, we are able to examine how women fare in comparison to men in the same profession. While women may be entering the medical profession at greater rates now than in earlier generations (Boulis and Jacobs 2008), an examination of which specialties they are more likely to enter is useful in examining the gendered state of the medical profession because medical specialties are not viewed as equivalent by medical professionals themselves (Hinze 1999;Colquitt 1994). ...
... This shift in the gender composition might bring about changes in medical service provision and patient treatment as has been suggested, for instance, by Riska (2001), Boulis &Jacobs (2008), andMcKinstry (2008). Previous research on the gender differences in the medical profession reports mixed results, however. ...
... This shift in the gender composition might bring about changes in medical service provision and patient treatment as has been suggested, for instance, by Riska (2001), Boulis &Jacobs (2008), andMcKinstry (2008). Previous research on the gender differences in the medical profession reports mixed results, however. ...
It is rarely the case in medical practice that differences between female and male physicians can be described under ceteris paribus conditions. Physicians self-select their type of practice, patients self-select physicians, and physicians are expected to account for both the context and the characteristics of their patients when providing medical treatment. As a result, reported gender differences in medical practice can have several alternative interpretations. A key question, therefore, is whetherthe treatment of a given patient is expected to depend on the gender of the physician. To address this question, we quantify gender effects using data from an incentivized laboratory experiment, in which Chinese medical doctors and Chinese medical students choose medical treatment under different payment schemes. We estimate preference parameters of females and males assuming decision makers have patient-regarding preferences. We cannot reject the hypothesis that gender differencesin treatment choices are absent. The differences between preference parameters of females and males are not statistically significant, and there is no evidence that the degree of randomness in choices differs between genders. The absence of gender effects in the laboratory, where choice context is fixed, provides nuance to previous findings on gender differences, and highlights the general difficulty of separating individuals’ behavior from their context.
... Empirical literature on doctors and their marriages has mainly focused on male physicians (Linzer et al., 2000;Pathman et al., 2002) or has tried to compare the work of male physicians with the work of their female counterparts (Bobula, 1980;Jena et al., 2016;Powers et al., 1969). Today, however, a significant change in this reality (Boulis & Jacobs, 2008;Isaac et al., 2013;West et al., 2018) may be largely more women have developed interest in the sciences and there has been an increase in the number of available slots in medical schools. Studies involving female physicians have focused on issues related to parenting (Cohen et al., 1988;Jolly et al., 2014) and job stress (Mitchell, 1984;Jolly et al., 2014). ...
... A significant portion of such literature focuses on women in medicine (Adams, 2010;Kletke et al., 1990) and the changes within marriage and families that this creates. Due to the influx of women into the medical profession (Adams, 2010;Boulis & Jacobs, 2008;Sotile & Sotile, 2000), work-family demands are likely to have varying impacts on their families, particularly marriages and parenting roles. ...
Relationships that involve a physician and a non-physician professional spouse face many challenges that are similar to those experienced by dual career marriages. However, there are unique demands that are associated with physicians who are married to other professionals. One such challenge is the task of navigating their multiple familial and professional roles. This present study explores how physicians who are married to other professionals confront and navigate the complex environment that is often characteristic of work-family issues in this population. Employing an exploratory qualitative design, 34 heterosexual individuals (17 couples) completed in-depth qualitative interviews. These dyadic interviews included 10 male physicians and 7 female physicians. A multisystemic approach was employed to explore themes that emerged. One major theme, contextual appreciation of the physician’s work demands, and three sub-themes: familial support, non-traditional parenting and domestic roles, and paid help, emerged. These data provide important information for the medical education of physicians with specific emphasis on navigating multiple familial and professional roles when part of dual career marriages. Findings provide implications for physician vitality/health, medical education, and continuing education with a focus on physician marriages.
... diskriminering och brist på handledare (se t.ex. Walsh 1977, More 1999, Lorber 1984, Boulis & Jacobs 2008. ...
... Man har förknippat den ökade andelen kvinnor med en framtida minskad status och makt för läkarprofessionen. Kritikerna har inte kunnat bekräfta att detta skulle ha skett (se Boulis & Jacobs 2008). ...
Professionsforskningen kännetecknas av olika teoretiska tolkningar. Denna artikel ger en översikt av de mest framträdande teoretiska tolkningarna om hälsoprofessionernas ställning och arbete. Den ger dessutom ett genusperspektiv på hälsoprofessioner och en vision om framtida forskning under globalisering.
... Both individual socialization processes and institutional influences are embedded in the social and historical context, considering women were excluded from the veterinary medicine profession until the early 1900s. Women's limited access to and place in the profession of veterinary medicine prior to the 1970s paralleled their relationship to many male-dominated professions during the twentieth century (Reskin and Roos 1990;Boulis and Jacobs 2008). ...
... Typically, a fall in salaries of occupations, such as service-related occupations, have been attributed to fall in status resulting from an influx of women (Reskin and Roos 1990); however, this finding does not hold for a profession such as human medicine (Boulis and Jacobs 2008), so there is a need for further investigation in the case of veterinary medicine. Additionally, with the vast array of specialty practice areas within the veterinary profession, examining the trends in salaries across areas of specialization within the profession, such as production animal medicine and industry practice, would be central to understanding the status of veterinary medicine through the gender shift and now as a feminized profession. ...
This book addresses the continued lack of the diversity in veterinary medicine, the least inclusive of all medical professions. Effective navigation of the complexity of diversity and inclusion in veterinary medicine requires clear enumeration, recognition, and understanding of key issues, challenges, and opportunities. In a nation with rapidly changing demographics, public needs and expectations of the veterinary profession will continue to evolve. A more diverse scientific workforce is required to feed the veterinary profession, not just for the purposed of equity, but as necessity for its sustainability and relevance.
... [21,24] They attributed this to additional pressure on female doctors as they try to balance family and domestic duties with their work obligations unlike their male counterparts, who face fewer societal expectations to balance work and family roles, allowing them more time to rest and recover from work-related stress. [25] While some studies corroborated this finding, others suggest that gender has no effect on burnout. [17,18,20,26] The accumulation of stress and exhaustion over a protracted period might raise the risk of burnout among physicians in more extended training programs. ...
Background
Burnout in the health care industry is a potential hazard that has reached epidemic proportions mostly among doctors in practice and training. Burnout has enormous consequences on doctors, patients, and health care institutions.
Aim
This study aimed to determine the prevalence and predictors of burnout among resident doctors in Enugu State, Nigeria.
Methods
This was a mixed-method study of 420 resident doctors in tertiary hospitals in Enugu State, Nigeria. Data were collected using Oldenburg Burnout Inventory and in-depth interviews of chief resident doctors of selected departments. Data were analyzed using IBM statistical package 23.0 and Nvivo 11. Test of significance was set at 0.05.
Results
The mean age of participants was 34.11 ± 5.08 years. The prevalence of burnout groups among resident doctors was 84.3% in the burnout group, 4.8% in the disengagement group, 6.9% in the exhaustion group, and 4.0% in the non-burnout group. Gender (OR = 1.861, C.I = 1.079–3.212), duration of training (OR = 1.740, C.I = 1.008–3.005), and working hours (OR = 2.982, C.I = 1.621–5.487) were the predictors of burnout; only working hours (OR = 0.279, C.I = 0.091–0.0862) was the predictor of disengagement; and gender (OR = 0.248, C.I = 0.107–0.579) was the predictor of exhaustion. Heavy workloads, long working hours, migration, poor working environment, job insecurity, poor remuneration, and management style were identified factors of burnout.
Conclusion
There was high prevalence of burnout among resident doctors, predicted by gender, duration of training, and working hours. Interventions are needed to reduce burnout, prevent the “brain drain”, and improve resident doctors’ overall well-being.
... The unful lled potential of male students coexists with increasing expectations that the physician will possess strong communication skills and a caring side, which were historically expected of female physicians. The medical eld is experiencing a shift with more women than men entering the profession, possibly accelerating this cultural change [47]. This should motivate the community involved in medical education to address these challenges, as there is a risk that medical education favors female students and thus fails to prepare men adequately. ...
Background: Efficient doctor-patient communication is essential for improving patient care. The impact of educational interventions on the communication skills of male and female students has not been systematically reviewed. The aim of this review is to identify interventions used to improve communication skills in medical curricula and investigate their effectiveness in improving the communication skills of male and female medical students.
Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted using the PRISMA guidelines. Inclusion criteria were as follows: used intervention strategies aiming to improve communication skills, participants were medical students, and studies were primary research studies, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses.
Results: 2913 articles were identified based on search terms. After title, abstract, and full-text review, 58 studies were included with interventions consisting of training or acting courses, curriculum-integrated, patient-interactive experiences, and community-based interventions. 69% of articles reported improved communication skills for both genders equally, 28% for women more than men, and 3% for men more than women. 16 of the 58 articles reported numerical data regarding communication skills pre-and post-intervention. Analysis revealed that post-intervention scores are significantly greater than pre-intervention scores for both male (p<0.001) and female students (p<0.001). While the post-test scores of male students were significantly lower than that of female students (p=0.01), there is no significant difference between genders for the benefits, or difference between post-intervention and pre-intervention scores (p=0.15), suggesting that both genders benefited equally.
Conclusion: Implementation of communication training into medical education will lead to increased overall medical student communication irrespective of gender. No specific interventions benefitting male students have been identified from published literature, suggesting need of further studies to explore the phenomenon of gender gap in communication skills and how to minimize the differences between male and female students.
... While systemic changes, such as expanded parental leave policies, need to be made to ease this tension for female physicians, mentorship is one of many tools that can help. Mentorship provides an avenue for women (and men) to come together and discuss the real challenges that women face in medicine, help younger trainees manage their expectations, and may ultimately yield increased research projects to create useful solutions [57][58][59]. ...
Mentorship is critical to the development and professional growth of graduate medical education (GME) trainees. It is a bidirectional relationship between a mentor and a mentee. Mentorship has consistently been shown to be beneficial for both the mentor and mentee, with the mentee gaining valuable skills in education, personal growth, and professional support, and the mentor attaining higher career satisfaction and potentially greater productivity. Yet, there is a lack of research and in-depth analysis of effective mentorship and its role in postgraduate medical education. This chapter outlines different approaches toward mentorship and provides the reader with basic concepts relevant to the effective and competent practice of mentorship. The authors discuss the challenges that physician mentors and mentees face, the organizational models of mentorship, the approaches and techniques for mentorship, and the deleterious effects of mentorship malpractice. Our general discussion touches on best practices for both the mentor and mentee to allow for self-improvement and lifelong learning. The variety of applicable models makes it difficult to measure effectiveness of mentorship in GME, but there is an ongoing need for expanded research on the benefits of mentorship, as greater amount of supporting evidence will likely incentivize organizations to create mentorship-friendly policies and support corresponding institutional changes.
... Both horizontal and vertical segregation have been documented in countries which have a near gender balance in medicine (Boulis and Jacobs 2008;Riska 2001;Harden 2001). It has also been proposed that gender segregation by medical specialty generally indicates the disempowerment of women (Ku 2011;Lorber 1993;Riska, Aaltonen, and Kentala 2015). ...
In Ukraine and in other former Soviet socialist republics, women make up a sizeable majority of those practicing medicine—a proportion estimated at around 70% over the course of the 20th century. Women predominate in most specialties, including prestigious disciplines such as cardiology or oncology, with the stark exception of surgical fields. While gender segregation by medical specialty has often been explained as women having been channelled out from more lucrative fields and into less prestigious medical specialties such as primary care, I suggest that broader sociopolitical and cultural forces are primarily responsible for this horizontal segregation. The central pillars of Ukraine’s dominant version of femininity—motherhood and beauty—gain special place in the nation’s decolonisation process and position women to take up medicine as a profession, while simultaneously preventing them from specialising in surgery in the same high numbers. In medical school and at work, gendered bodies are read to be in the right or wrong place as communities of practice informally instruct students and young practitioners about how easy or difficult it will be for them to belong to certain subfields. ‘Beautiful’ (non-surgical) specialties enhance women’s cultural authority even if they are not always as well-remunerated as the surgical ones. They permit flexible schedules and career paths, connote social grace, and solidify women’s central role in families, and ultimately in national reproduction.
... Postgraduate specialty training falls in the stage of life in which a family is often started. As reported in other studies [5,6,8,10,[21][22][23] and as also found in the present study, significantly fewer women with than without children hold senior physician posts. Working in a private practice [11], mostly as an employee practitioner [22], seems to offer an attractive alternative for physician-mothers. ...
Over the past few years, there has been increasing interest in the question of how couples coordinate their careers and private lives. The aim of this study was to investigate the career arrangements of physicians and their partners according to gender and parenthood status, and to compare dual-physician couples with other types of couples.
Data pertaining to 414 physicians (214 females, 51.7%; 200 males, 48.3%) from a cohort of medical school graduates participating in the SwissMedCareer Study was analysed according to socio-demographic variables, employment status and career prioritisation of the physicians and their partners. Differences in terms of gender, parenthood status and type of couple were investigated with Chi-square tests.
The most prevalent career arrangement for a male physician with young children was that of full-time employment for the physician himself with a partner not in employment or working less than 50%-time. By contrast, the most common arrangement for a female physician with young children was that of 50-69% part-time employment with a partner working full-time. For couples without children, the most common arrangement was full-time employment for both partners. Dual-physician couples differed significantly from other types of couples in terms of how they rated career priority, with male physicians with physician partners more likely than male physicians with partners holding another academic degree or with non-academic partners to regard both careers as equally important (p ≤0.001). Female physicians with physician partners were more likely to consider their partners' careers as of prime importance than those with academic or non-academic partners (p ≤0.001).
The priority given by couples to the man's career reflects traditional gender-role attitudes in male and female physicians. Starting a family slows down the career progress of female physicians but not of male physicians. Providing more childcare facilities in hospitals and flexible working hours to meet the needs of physician parents with young children could encourage a higher work participation of physician-mothers and might constitute an effective strategy for combating the shortage of physicians in Switzerland.
Background
Efficient doctor-patient communication is essential for improving patient care. The impact of educational interventions on the communication skills of male and female students has not been systematically reviewed. The aim of this review is to identify interventions used to improve communication skills in medical curricula and investigate their effectiveness in improving the communication skills of male and female medical students.
Methods
A systematic review of the literature was conducted using the PRISMA guidelines. Inclusion criteria were as follows: used intervention strategies aiming to improve communication skills, participants were medical students, and studies were primary research studies, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses.
Results
2913 articles were identified based on search terms. After title, abstract, and full-text review, 58 studies were included with interventions consisting of Training or Drama Courses, Curriculum-Integrated, Patient Learning Courses, and Community-Based Learning Courses. 69% of articles reported improved communication skills for both genders equally, 28% for women more than men, and 3% for men more than women. 16 of the 58 articles reported numerical data regarding communication skills pre-and post-intervention. Analysis revealed that post-intervention scores are significantly greater than pre-intervention scores for both male (p < 0.001) and female students (p < 0.001). While the post-test scores of male students were significantly lower than that of female students (p = 0.01), there is no significant difference between genders for the benefits, or difference between post-intervention and pre-intervention scores (p = 0.15), suggesting that both genders benefited equally.
Conclusion
Implementation of communication training into medical education leads to improvement in communication skills of medical students, irrespective of gender. No specific interventions benefitting male students have been identified from published literature, suggesting need of further studies to explore the phenomenon of gender gap in communication skills and how to minimize the differences between male and female students.
This book illustrates the significance of recent efforts to abolish nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccine mandates. These legislative changes replace pro-vaccine persuasion with an ultimatum: Either vaccinate your children or they cannot attend school or daycare. The book explores the ethics and politics of this new kind of public health coercion. It examines the history of immunization, vaccine mandates, and conflicts about public health policies. It also analyzes California’s efforts to exclude unvaccinated children from school and daycare following the Disneyland measles outbreak of 2014. The book uses original interviews with key California policymakers and activists to explain the development and execution of that state’s new vaccination policies and to illuminate similar immunization policy developments elsewhere. This book is a story about how political and community actors fought to exclude unvaccinated children from school in the face of significant opposition and failing public health institutions. It unpacks the meaning and impact of these efforts for broader debates about immunization governance throughout America and the world, including conflicts about coercive public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Introduction. Career development has become one of the most significant areas of human resource management in modern organizations. Despite considerable progress in increasing the representation of women in various industries and also a multiplication of women holding senior positions, today, the segregation of the labour market persists. Women and men are unevenly distributed in such fields as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; there are differences in wages and career advancement. Traditional career models have certain limitations in research and, therefore, require revision and updating.
Purpose. Generalization of foreign experience of gender studies in the field of women’s professional careers.
Materials and methods. The scientific review is presented by a systematic analysis of foreign gender studies over the past 10-15 years.
Theoretical justification. The authors describe the main methods of studies examining women’s career advancement and also consider the causes of gender segregation, such as career choice, gender discrimination in employment and the workplace, and the phenomenon of the “glass ceiling”. Factors influencing the choice of career strategies are competitiveness, self-esteem, self-efficacy, the influence of cultural perceptions of gender roles, self-stereotyping, the presence or absence of role models, the social costs of women’s careers and the possibility of their recognition by society as professionals.
Discussion and conclusion. A possible way to solve the problem of women’s career advancement may be to reduce the pressure of gender stereotypes, including even the distribution of household and child-rearing responsibilities and, ultimately, contributing to the improvement of well-being and life quality in general.
This article combines humanistic "data critique" with informed inspection of big data analysis. It measures gender bias when gender prediction software tools (Gender API, Namsor, and Genderize.io) are used in historical big data research. Gender bias is measured by contrasting personally identified computer science authors in the well-regarded DBLP dataset (1950-1980) with exactly comparable results from the software tools. Implications for public understanding of gender bias in computing and the nature of the computing profession are outlined. Preliminary assessment of the Semantic Scholar dataset is presented. The conclusion combines humanistic approaches with selective use of big data methods.
Objective
Substance use disorders (SUDs) are stigmatized conditions in medicine, with negative attitudes toward patients with SUDs beginning to form in medical school. Only a few studies with small samples show that attending an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting may help decrease addiction stigma. This study examined whether attending an AA meeting impacts medical student attitudes toward patients with SUDs and any gender and age group differences within these attitudes.Methods
As part of their psychiatry clerkship, 138 third-year medical students attended an AA meeting and wrote reflection essays discussing expectations before the meeting, feelings while there, and thoughts on how these feelings might affect patient care. The authors performed a thematic analysis to identify themes and t tests to compare theme frequency by gender and age group.ResultsA primary theme in student responses was a reduction in stigmatizing attitudes, which was broken down into three subthemes: complexity of addiction (46%), diversity of people with addiction (37%), and practical applications (66%). Practical applications comprised compassionate care (53%) and intention to address SUDs clinically (35%). While no gender differences were found in theme frequency, younger students showed significantly higher frequency of all themes.Conclusions
Attending an AA meeting can challenge medical students’ stigmatizing attitudes about addiction and increase flexibility of thinking. Younger students’ biases may not be as solidified, stressing the importance of early exposure to patients in recovery during medical school. Attending an AA meeting and reflecting on the experience may be one way to decrease addiction stigma among medical students.
Introduction: The female students of the 1960s and 1970s have been at the forefront of issues for women in medicine throughout their careers. They have personally experienced the diverse challenges and opportunities that have continued to arise, for women in medicine over the past 50 years. Capturing their stories can provide a unique contribution to the history of women in medicine, especially in documenting the crucial transitional decades during which women entered the profession in increasing numbers. Their experiences can also inform programs to improve the careers of current and future women in medicine.
Materials and Methods: We partnered with the Medical Society of Sedgwick County to invite all women who had been members before 1990 and still lived in the area to participate in focus groups about their experiences in medical school and residency. Interviews were recorded, and the recorded discussions and field notes were analyzed by using a thematic analysis approach
Results: Discussions revolved around several topics, including motivations to become a physician, family attitudes, experiences during medical school and residency, and experiences with co-workers and patients. Illustrative quotes were selected for the themes identified.
Discussion: This project illuminates the motivations, attitudes, and experiences of a diverse group of women who entered medical school in the 1960s and 1970s. Although they came from very different backgrounds and trained in a variety of institutions and specialties, their stories revealed consistent themes, many of which remain relevant for female physicians.
Conclusion: This unique cohort of women were part of the major transition from times when women were rare in medicine to being at least half of physician trainees. Their experiences should be used to inform the profession moving forward.
Background:
We sought to analyze gender differences in General Practitioners' (GP) preventive practices: variations according to the GP's and the patient's genders, separately and combined, and the homogeneity of GPs' practices according to gender.
Methods:
Fifty-two general practitioners volunteered to participate in a cross-sectional study. A sample of 70 patients (stratified by gender) aged 40-70 years was randomly chosen from each GP's patient panel. Information extracted from the medical files was used to describe the GPs' preventive practices for each patient: measurements of weight, waist circumference, glucose, and cholesterol; inquiry and counseling about smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, and physical activity, and dates of cervical smears and mammographies. An aggregate preventive score was calculated to assess the percentage of these practices performed by each GP for patients overall and by gender. Mixed models were used to test for gender differences.
Results:
Questionnaires were collected in 2008-2009 for 71% of the 3640 patients and analyzed in June 2017. Male patients and female GPs were associated with the most frequent performance of many types of preventive care. The aggregate preventive score was higher for male patients (OR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.47-1.75) and female GPs (OR = 1.35, 95% CI 1.05-1.73). There was no combined effect of the genders of the two protagonists. Female patients of male GPs appeared to receive preventive care least frequently and female GPs to deliver preventive care more consistently than their male colleagues.
Conclusion:
Physicians need to be aware of these differences, for both patient gender and their own.
Gender bias has a variety of definitions based upon the frame of reference, but basically is considered as prejudice based on gender or unfair differences in how women and men are regarded considering their gender and/or biological sex. Gender bias, based on traditional stereotypical impressions of sex and gender, be it implicit, unintentional, unconscious, or even conscious and intentional, or called by other terms such as sexism, has consequences for the health, healthcare, and careers of both women and men.
This chapter focuses on the status of women in medicine, primarily in terms of becoming physicians in the United States. Considerable advances have been made in the number of women who become physicians, and gender parity has almost been achieved in medical school admissions and graduates. However, women in medicine continue to experience high rates of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, contributing to their unequal representation across medical specialties and in upper-level and leadership positions across specialties. A pay gap exists between male and female physicians, even when taking into account different areas of specialization, leadership positions, experience, productivity, and other factors that affect compensation. We explore efforts that have been made to address gender inequities among physicians and argue that fundamental changes in how the work of physicians is conceived of, organized and valued, are necessary in order to successfully tackle the male-dominated culture of medicine. We conclude with a discussion of the global feminization of medicine and its impact on the health care system and the health of populations, especially women.
The authors are from the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
The authors have no relevant financial relationships to disclose.
The movement toward official academic training for medical professionals in the 12th and 13th centuries led to the exclusion of women from professional health care because they were excluded from universities.1–3 Although women were barred from the practice of surgery, they were able to fill roles as bone-setters. The treatment of musculoskeletal conditions was largely the domain of bonesetters in the centuries before the 1850s. After the advent of anesthesia and antibiotics, the profession of orthopedic surgery developed rapidly, and the bonesetters slowly disappeared.
After passage of the 1972 Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act in the United States, including Title IX⁴ on sex-based discrimination, the number of female graduates from medical schools began increasing at a steady rate, tripling by 1980.⁵ However, the percentage of women in surgery lagged behind that in medicine: in 1980, 12% of physicians, but only 2% of surgeons, were women.⁶ Notably, the percentage of female residents in orthopedic surgery grew at a slower rate than that in other surgical subspecialties (Table 1).6,7…
Gender earnings disparities among physicians exist even after considering differences in specialty, part-time status, and practice type. Little is known about the role of job satisfaction priorities on earnings differences.
To examine gender differences in work characteristics and job satisfaction priorities, and their relationship with gender earnings disparities among hospitalists.
Observational cross-sectional survey study.
US hospitalists in 2010.
Self-reported income, work characteristics, and priorities among job satisfaction domains.
On average, women compared to men hospitalists were younger, less likely to be leaders, worked fewer full-time equivalents, worked more nights, reported fewer daily billable encounters, more were pediatricians, worked in university settings, worked in the Western United States, and were divorced. More hospitalists of both genders prioritized optimal workload among the satisfaction domains. However, substantial pay ranked second in prevalence by men and fourth by women. Women hospitalists earned $14,581 less than their male peers in an analysis adjusting for these differences.
The gender earnings gap persists among hospitalists. A portion of the disparity is explained by the fewer women hospitalists compared to men who prioritize pay. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2015. © 2015 Society of Hospital Medicine.
© 2015 Society of Hospital Medicine.
Women now surpass men in overall rates of college graduation in many industrialized countries, but sex segregation in fields of study persists. In a world where gender norms have changed but gender stereotypes remain strong, we argue that men's and women's attitudes and orientations toward fields of study in college are less constrained by gendered institutions than is the ranking of these fields. Accordingly, the sex segregation in the broader choice set of majors considered by college applicants may be lower than the sex segregation in their first preference field of study selection. With unique data on the broader set of fields considered by applicants to elite Israeli universities, we find support for this theory. The factors that drive the gender gap in the choice of field of study, in particular labor market earnings, risk aversion, and the sex composition of fields, are weaker in the broad set of choices than in the first choice. The result is less segregation in considered majors than in the first choice and, more broadly, different gender patterns in the decision process for the set of considered majors and for the first choice. We consider the theoretical implications of these results.
Using a survey, interviews, and observations, the authors examine inequality in temporal flexibility at home and at work. They focus on four occupations to show that class advantage is deployed in the service of gendered notions of temporal flexibility while class disadvantage makes it difficult to obtain such flexibility. The class advantage of female nurses and male doctors enables them to obtain flexibility in their work hours; they use that flexibility in gendered ways: nurses to prioritize family and physicians to prioritize careers. Female nursing assistants and male emergency medical technicians can obtain little employee-based flexibility and, as a result, have more difficulty meeting conventional gendered expectations. Advantaged occupations “do gender” in conventional ways while disadvantaged occupations “undo gender.” These processes operate through organizational rules and cultural schemas that sustain one another but may undermine the gender and class neutrality of family-friendly policies.
In May 2005, Jim Foley (Board Chair of the Computing Research Association) published an abstract that was titled with these words: "Computing, We Have a Problem …". The main purpose of Dr. Foley's article was to discuss the image problem within computing, that "the public does not fully understand, and hence does not appreciate, what computing is and why computing and computing research are important" [1]. He then considered the consequences of this image problem (e.g., decreased enrollments in computing degree programs) and stated what CRA planned to do to rectify the situation.
While Dr. Foley's article did not mention women, minorities, or persons with disabilities, it is clear that several groups in our society are tremendously impacted by the image problem that exists within computing. In this article, we begin by discussing the lack of participation that exists for those who are trained in computing (i.e., people who have the skills to develop computer hardware and software). We then discuss why this digital divide should be of high concern to everyone, what we can learn from other previously male-dominated fields, what you can do to help improve the current situation, and what the future might hold.
Today, women constitute about half of medical students in several Western societies, yet women physicians are still underrepresented in surgical specialties and clustered in other branches of medicine. Gender segregation in specialty preference has been found already in medical school. It is important to study the career preferences of our future physicians, as they will influence the maintenance of an adequate supply of physicians in all specialties and the future provision of health care. American and British studies dominate the area of gender and medical careers whereas Swedish studies on medical students' reasons for specialty preference are scarce. The aim of this study is to investigate and compare Swedish male and female medical students' specialty preferences and the motives behind them.
Between 2006 and 2009, all last-year medical students at Umea University, Sweden (N = 421), were invited to answer a questionnaire about their future career and family plans. They were asked about their specialty preference and how they rated the impact that the motivational factors had for their choice. The response rate was 89% (N = 372); 58% were women (N = 215) and 42% were men (N = 157). Logistic regression was used to evaluate the independent impact of each motivational factor for specialty preference.
On the whole, male and female last-year students opted for similar specialties. Men and women had an almost identical ranking order of the motivational factors. When analyzed separately, male and female students showed both similarities and differences in the motivational factors that were associated with their specialty preference. A majority of the women and a good third of the men intended to work part-time. The motivational factor combining work with family correlated with number of working hours for women, but not for men.
The gender similarities in the medical students' specialty preferences are striking and contrast with research from other Western countries where male and female students show more differences in career aspirations. These similarities should be seized by the health care system in order to counteract the horizontal gender segregation in the physician workforce of today.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.