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 But the women surgeons still rated their career satisfaction highly,
researchers found.
“As a woman in surgery, and someone interested in gender issues, I
don't find the results of this study are surprising, but perhaps
disappointing,” said lead author Dr. Natashia M. Seemann of the
University of Toronto.
Surgery generally is a challenging career, and so-called academic
surgery (i.e., at university hospitals) carries specific pressures
and expectations, she told Reuters Health by email.
“For example, many academic surgeons are expected to reach a certain
research productivity yearly, and have teaching and administrative
responsibilities” on top of their duties as a surgeon, Seemann said.
Even in non-surgical specialties where more than half the faculty is
female, like pediatrics, women are not represented proportionately
in leadership positions, she said.
Though the number of women in surgery is steadily increasing, they
still account for only 22 percent of full-time faculty and 1 percent
of chairs of surgery.
Seemann and her colleagues invited 212 women in academic surgery at
Canadian medical centers to answer a 48-question online survey. Of
the 81 who responded, almost half were assistant professors – a
relatively junior position.
Respondents reported working between 40 and 100 hours per week.
More than half of the women said their gender had played a role in
career challenges, and while some had experienced gender
discrimination in medical school, residency or fellowship, the
highest percentage, 41 percent, said they experienced this
discrimination as full-fledged staff surgeons.
Gender discrimination in today’s surgical world is subtle, Seemann
said. “Female medical students are told much more often than male
medical students to consider a career other than surgery because
it's not compatible with family life,” she said.
“A female surgical resident will be mistaken for a nurse repeatedly
by other staff in the hospitals, and the patient she just introduced
herself to as ‘Doctor’ will go on to speak directly to the male
medical student working with her,” Seemann said. “The issue with
this type of gender discrimination is that it's not 'big or bad
enough' to report, and rather in some cases it slowly chips away at
the self-esteem and confidence of extremely intelligent and
hard-working women.”
Almost 80 percent of respondents said they had a professional
mentor, almost 90 percent of whom were male. About half wished they
had had better mentoring, and many would have liked female mentors.
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“Mentorship is an area that we know is extremely important to the
success of academic surgeons, and having more women, and men
supportive of women, in these roles will help more women surgeons
advance,” Seemann said.
Despite these factors, the women rated their career satisfaction at
an average of 8.6 on a scale of 1 to 10.
“Lack of support for working women, especially when rising into
leadership positions, is evident in many places in society,” said
Dr. Paula Ferrada, director of the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship
at Virginia Commonwealth University, who was not part of the new
study.
In the U.S. and Canada, there are safeguards built into medical
school and residency programs that fall away in the “real world” for
working surgeons, Ferrada told Reuters Health by phone.
“The gender imbalance in surgery, particularly at the leadership
level, has allowed a dated culture to exist far longer than it
should - one that favors confidence over competence, quick decisions
over good decisions, and an unsustainable work-life balance,”
Seemann said.
The survey respondents said flexible work hours, reduced workload
and more equitable relationships with colleagues would influence
more women to become surgeons, the researchers reported in the
American Journal of Surgery.
“(Academic surgery) is still a bastion of masculinity, and also the
best paid of specialties,” said Patrizia Longo of the Women’s and
Gender Studies department of Saint Mary’s College of California in
Moraga.
Ferrada advises young surgeons, male or female, to seek out mentors
who can give advice and point out opportunities. “Find someone who
is doing what you want to do and ask them what they wish they knew
earlier,” she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1OkeAIP The American Journal of Surgery,
online November 17, 2015.
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