I am preparing for my blog of April 28th. Why that day? Well, if you are so uninformed as to not know that there is a new non-holiday on the calendar, right up there with doctor’s appreciation day, surgical techs week, administrative assistants/secretary’s day, oh and lest I forget, April fool’s day, let me enlighten you. It’s Equal Pay Day!
There are a lot of interesting things to observe about Equal Pay Day. I intend to describe them to you on that day, since I have pledged through the National Women’s Law Center, to write a blog on that particular day about that particular subject. Sorry if you are let down. But this preparation is putting a lot of pressure on me, so I have been doing some research, not just for the blog post, but also for why I need to keep writing about women doctors and how gender discrimination has a particularly sinister effect on this group and why it is going to affect the health of our entire nation. Sound a bit too extreme? Well, I hope by the time I am finished with the research, I will be proven either totally crazy (as some people already believe) or you will agree that the problem of gender discrimination for women physicians is not a problem just for women but for everyone, and it is affecting you, no matter who you are or what your gender, political party, race, religion, or medical insurance status.
For decades we have been hearing that if there were enough women in the ranks of the whatever-profession-or-field you are interested in, women would naturally rise to levels of leadership and have a profound and important effect. Let more women in. Things will have to change. An assumption was made which was simply wrong.
Let’s take the case of women physicians who serve in leadership positions on journal editorial boards and/or the board of directors of national medical associations. Both of these are considered indicators that the person so designated for the honor and the task set before him/her is worthy, and is a leader who can effect change. One would think that those branches of medicine which have the greatest number of women would have more women in these leadership positions. Wrong. Again. Another assumption bites the dust.
Consider the article that came out in the Journal of the National Medical Association in 2007 by Morton and Sonnad: Women on Professional Society and Journal Editorial Boards. Overall, 26% of women are in medicine and only 17% are in leadership positions. No surprise there. But what is fascinating is what is found in the details of table 1. Eleven of the 21 areas of medicine listed have greater than 20% female penetration. Of those 11, six of these specialties have the most women to tap into for leadership but the fewest women in leadership positions! These six fields were the only ones that had statistically significantly fewer women.
Most surprisingly, it was not the surgical areas where women were underrepresented in these positions. In fact, my specialty, otolaryngology was one of the few areas in which women were represented in leadership positions in greater numbers than their proportion in the specialty.
My take on this is that the fewer the women, the less threatening they are because their proportions are so small (about 11% for ENT and about the same or much less for the other 10 areas). Their presence will suffice to fulfill the requirement that women be represented, but not enough to really change the character of the organization or disrupt the flow of the men into the old boy’s network and maintain the status quo. The greater the participation of women, the greater the chance that things might change. So when there are too many to bring on board, so to speak, the reaction is, whether purposefully or not, to keep them out.
Furthermore, while they hail that 35 of the women held multiple roles on society and editorial journal boards, designating them as more influential, I believe this is merely a reflection that women who are seen as “go along” types, are chosen over and over to “go along”.
The authors do not seem to share my cynical view of how women do or do not enter medical leadership positions. I have (and still do) serve on journal editorial boards. I have (but no longer) serve on organized medical society boards. I have interesting stories to tell about both of these experiences. Another time.
But before I end this post, what are your thoughts about the number’s game? What are your thoughts about all these assumptions? Faulty? Or not? Please share.
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