women in general surgery

[proton]

hello pals. i can't help but notice that there aren't too many chicks in gen surg. why is that? every time i say that someone says "but dr so and so is a woman!" which may be true, but still, the vast majority of general surgeons are men. why? there's a real stereotype surrounding the residency but what about staff life?

[Jochi1543]

Very difficult to have a baby. Sure, there's mat leave in residency, but once you're back, you have to comply with the expectations (which may mean not getting home post-call until 5 PM, etc). The chief resident when I did my GS core spent 120+ hours at the hospital one week, 60+ of them without leaving the hospital - just some cat naps in the on-call suite. Sure, no one says that a mother CAN'T do it, but then it begs the question of why have a family in the first place, if you are not going to be there at all for your children. I don't think many women who want children would be ok with barely seeing their children for the first 2-3 years of their lives. And unless you're lucky and manage to get into med school after 2nd year undergrad, then delaying pregnancy until after residency is not really an option.

 

Of course, if you never want children, this is a non-issue.

[Renin]

Because I look like a man in scrubs.

[proton]

This sounds terrible...what about once residency is over? Is consultant life that bad too?

 

Very difficult to have a baby. Sure, there's mat leave in residency, but once you're back, you have to comply with the expectations (which may mean not getting home post-call until 5 PM, etc). The chief resident when I did my GS core spent 120+ hours at the hospital one week, 60+ of them without leaving the hospital - just some cat naps in the on-call suite. Sure, no one says that a mother CAN'T do it, but then it begs the question of why have a family in the first place, if you are not going to be there at all for your children. I don't think many women who want children would be ok with barely seeing their children for the first 2-3 years of their lives. And unless you're lucky and manage to get into med school after 2nd year undergrad, then delaying pregnancy until after residency is not really an option.

 

Of course, if you never want children, this is a non-issue.

[Satsuma]

hello pals. i can't help but notice that there aren't too many chicks in gen surg. why is that? every time i say that someone says "but dr so and so is a woman!" which may be true, but still, the vast majority of general surgeons are men. why? there's a real stereotype surrounding the residency but what about staff life?

 

Residency is crappy for most specialties.

Every staff person in gen surg I know, works more hours than I would want to work as a staff (arguably I never "wanted" to work the crazy hours of residency either). This includes gen surg in the academic centre where I train, and gen surg in the community when I was a student.

So for sure, it will be harder to obtain a work/life balance. And women are probably going to be more cognizant of that, at least earlier on. I think men realize it later sometimes. But work-life balance doesn't have to mean kids. It could just mean having interests outside of working.

 

Sadly in some places, there still may be some gender bias in surgical specialties also. I had to listen to many conversations about how there were too many women in medicine while on my gen surg rotation as a med student. I was turned off that specialty pretty quickly. But all the poop would have turned me off anyway.

[NLengr]

hello pals. i can't help but notice that there aren't too many chicks in gen surg. why is that? every time i say that someone says "but dr so and so is a woman!" which may be true, but still, the vast majority of general surgeons are men. why? there's a real stereotype surrounding the residency but what about staff life?

 

Really? At both my med school and residency sites, Gen Surg has more females than males.

 

I bet if you look at the number of females graduating gen Surg over the past ten years it's many more females than traditionally. If someone is really keen they can check the CaRMS specific sex matching data.

 

Ortho and Urology are the last male dominated areas.

[Lactic Folly]

Similar pattern in surgery here.. inter-year variations in general surgery recently, from almost all female to almost all male.

 

However, radiology has consistently also attracted more male applicants than female every year.. it's not completely clear why, but may have to do with the image of the specialty.

[Jochi1543]

 

I bet if you look at the number of females graduating gen Surg over the past ten years it's many more females than traditionally.

 

Absolutely; but there's still way fewer women than men going into gen surg. I'm sure some programs have more female residents than others because these programs are more accommodating and friendly towards females, and because that rumor quickly gets around, so more women might be eager to rank these programs higher.

[ellorie]

Similar pattern in surgery here.. inter-year variations in general surgery recently, from almost all female to almost all male.

 

However, radiology has consistently also attracted more male applicants than female every year.. it's not completely clear why, but may have to do with the image of the specialty.

 

Pun intended?

[Lactic Folly]

heh, didn't notice until you pointed it out.. not really reviewing my posts that closely nowadays

 

But to the OP:

https://www.womensurgeons.org/aws_library/WomeninSurgeryResidency.pdf

[NLengr]

Absolutely; but there's still way fewer women than men going into gen surg.

 

I don't think that's true. I just looked back though the past 4 years of CaRMS data to check. In 2 years (2010/2011) women outnumbered men for both applicant's and matches. Even in the other 2 years (2009/2012) the difference between men and women was less than 20%. It would appear based on objective data that approximately equal numbers of females and males are entering general surgery as PGY 1's.

 

That certainly reflects my anecdotal experience.

[lost__in__space]

I can't wait to be a female gen surg :-)

 

Also I thought the field was male dominated but take a look at UofT's gen surg... there's a lot more female faces than I'd of thought.

[rmorelan]

I can't wait to be a female gen surg :-)

 

Also I thought the field was male dominated but take a look at UofT's gen surg... there's a lot more female faces than I'd of thought.

 

interesting note - more women in our school matched to gen surg than men this year I believe.

 

those gendar biases will slowly weaken over time I think. We are already well on the way.

[NLengr]

The last real strongholds of male dominated specialties are Ortho and Urology (obviously).