Girl talk
BMJ 2005; 330 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/sbmj.0506252 (Published 01 June 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;330:0506252
- Finola Lynch, third year medical student1
- 1University of East Anglia
Unless you were holidaying on Mars last summer it seemed impossible to miss the furore created by Carol Black. The president of the United Kingdom's Royal College of Physicians was quoted as saying that the medical profession had too many female doctors. As a result of the increasing proportion of women, the status of medicine was in danger of diminishing.1 Although Black later distanced herself from these comments, she sparked an enormous debate in the press and gave the kiss of life to a word now synonymous with what is happening to the state of medicine - feminisation.
Straw poll
Do a quick straw poll among your medical peers, however, and it is soon clear that most undergraduates were blissfully unaware of the media storm. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Isn't it the job of undergraduates to pass medical degrees, not worry about the state of a profession that they will not be joining for several years? Besides, it could be argued that medical schools are already feminised. Women make up at least 60% of medical undergraduate numbers.2 By 2012, it is predicted that female doctors will outnumber male doctors.3 Surely demographics can take care of equality?
Selena Gray, president of the Medical Women's Federation, is not so sure. “Clearly the medical student population has been feminised,” she says. “However it's not clear whether these changes will automatically find their way into equal numbers in the competition for all consultant posts. Some specialties now have a high proportion of female doctors, including general practice. But medicine as a whole has not been feminised, despite the …
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