The Gender’s Bias

Dame Carol Black, the former president of the Royal College of Physicians, the UK’s oldest and most distinguished medical college, raised an almighty storm. She suggested that the growing number of women in medicine was altering the practice of medicine itself, and risked the profession losing status and influence. Women, she said, were choosing a particular set of medical specialisms that avoided the longest hours and most commitment. Their greater tendency to take career breaks – not just to have children but to raise them – and their greater propensity to work part-time, raised questions about whether they would ever get to the top of the profession in sufficient numbers. Would they spend the hours and gain the experience necessary to become leading academics, senior medical and clinical managers? And if they did not do so, would the practice of medicine suffer and, along with it, patient care?

The remarks provoked extreme reactions. Some argued she was self-evidently right. Others argued that it was continued male domination of the profession that ensured that the top positions were still ‘jobs for the boys’, that society and medicine had still not adapted to give women equal opportunities.

Five years on, the college has produced an extensive piece of research on the issue that pulls together all the available data from the UK, both qualitative and quantitative, and also examines comparable data elsewhere. Its broad findings suggest that the trends Dame Carol identified are indeed valid; and that the questions she raised need debating. In the UK, the proportion of female medical students has been rising since the 1960s; currently women account for 57 per cent of the total and are likely to become the majority.

The research shows that women display an early preference for more ‘planable’, less physically invasive specialities; ones that tend to involve less unpredictable time commitment and fewer unsocial hours. They also opt for specialties that are less technologically oriented. It is important to stress that this is on average.

Such choices are not exclusive to the UK. Similar preferences can be seen in the US, Canada, New Zealand and some Scandinavian countries. The numbers suggest that this is the outcome of choice and preference rather than of simple male prejudice.

But if the trends continue, they will have big implications for the practice of medicine. Furthermore, if more women are working part time, more men may seek the same. Maintaining high quality care with an increasingly part-time workforce is likely to become more of a challenge.

Financial Times

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