PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN DOCTORS
If the medical worforce stabilises at 70% females 30% males, this does not translate into 70% of the work being performed by females and 30% by males.
Far from it.
If, for simplicty, the female participation rate is 50% and the male participation rate is 100%, then two female doctors have to be employed for every male to produce the equivalent amount of work. Or for each 100 whole time equivalents of medical time, 140 females and 30 males have to be employed. ie an extra 70 doctors per hundred have to enter medical school to accomodate the projected participation rates of females. This is a crude estimate because, for part time workers, it does not take into account the disproportiate amount of time spent on supporting professional activities such as formal continuing professional development, appraisal, job planning etc. none of which have been proven to have direct benefit to patient care. Nor does it take into account the lack of progression of part-time female doctors into senior grades.
These figures, of course, are crystal ball gazing, but may not be too wide of the mark.
Participation of female doctors follows a bimodal pattern. Initially, for a few years after graduating, women tend to work full time often till a higher qualification is obtained. This frequently translates into MRCP or MRCGP, broad qualifications which stand any doctor in good stead for picking up a career again later in most locations.
After having children, many women “retire” completely for a few years, to return again usually on a part-time basis.
Assuming on average 2 children 2 years apart, then the earliest evidence of a return into the workforce would be seven years later. For some it is longer than this, a return being delayed until the children are teenagers. A few effectively never return. A high proportion of returners never work full time. Only a small proportion returning to hospital medicine achieve full time consultant status.
Once upon a time it was not uncommon for women to be asked by interview commitees for higher medical traiing whether they planned to become pregnant.
Since these questions are now forbidden, perhaps some day there will be experiments to determine which attributes females should have on entering medical school that make them more likely to stick tenaciously to a full time medical career while producing children.
However, these clever psychological tests would be discriminatory.
In the absence of these tests, it can be argued that it is not cost effective to train women doctors.
The Witch Doctor - Link to a random page
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LINK TO UK MISSING KIDS WEBSITE
LINK TO MISSING PERSONS WEBSITE
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