Martin 1

Jasmine Martin

Professor Douglas

ENG 111-01

05 December 2018

Do females face more hardships than males as surgeons?

Have you ever wondered why there are fewer female surgeons than men? Or why most of

the leadership positions for surgeons are headed by men? Have you ever wondered if women

have a hard time becoming surgeons? Medicine is a difficult career path that many people chose

not to follow. For specialists, specifically surgeons, the level of difficulty increases, as does the

gender inequality. In an article called, Surgeons (Women and Men) Say It's Time to Close

Surgery's Gender Gap, writer Christina Frangou says that the largest gender gap in medicine, is

in the surgical field. Surgery has always been a male dominated career and even in the 21st

century, that is still true. In the field of medicine, where men and women should have all the

same opportunities to become a surgeon, is it possible that women face more hardships than men

as surgeons?

The level of difficulty surgeons face can be overwhelming, especially for women who are

worried about having a family. In an interview for the American Medical Association, Dr.

Jennifer Svahn said that more women may not be surgeons because it doesn’t fit the lifestyle that

most women want which includes, “being a wife and mother in the traditional sense.” To become

a surgeon, people must dedicate years of their life to school, internships, and residency in order

to reach the level of specialty they desire. For women, the years they spend in school and

residency, leading up to the day they are full surgeons, means they have little time to have

children or marry. It causes many female surgeons to choose their careers over starting a family.
 Martin 2

This issue is not the same for men as they do not have to worry about bearing children by a

certain age. Many women may feel a pressure to have children by a certain age and the

difficulties that already come with being a surgeon can prove to be too much for them to juggle

having children and performing surgeries for hours on end. A female surgeon may face the issue

of deciding whether or not to have children and this personal struggle is a part of the many

reasons that women go through more hardships than male surgeons do.

For female surgeons, not only is there a struggle with juggling their career and family

life, but there is also difficulty with expectations. Many female surgeons deal with different

expectations than men in the medical field because they are expected to behave in a certain

manner that is not the same as their fellow male surgeons. In a scholarly journal written by Joan

Cassell called Doing surgery, Doing gender; Women Surgeons in a Man’s Profession, she

writes, “Whether or not she was particularly interested, as the only woman in the training

program, she was expected to be the repository of emotional confidences.” Joan found this after

studying a female surgeon (who was the only female resident in her training program) said that

she was the one that many males went to for emotional or compassion related issues they had in

the hospital or with patients. Even if the female resident acted cold and detached like the male

surgeons, they would still confide in her or they would say she was not behaving appropriately.

This shows how female surgeons are seen as the nurturers or compassionate ones in the field

even if they do not act like they are. It also shows the way they are perceived by other male

surgeons (but not all). The expectations for female surgeons can make their lifestyle and work

environment more difficult as they are not treated equally and expected to act as others want

them to.
 Martin 3

Climbing up the ranks is also a difficult task for female surgeons, especially since many

of the high-ranking positions are dominated by men. In Discrimination Against Female Surgeons

is Still Alive: Where are the Full Professorships and Chairs of Departments, written by Nancy

Epstein, she says that about 50% of all female surgeons who enter medical school or are

residents, will never move on to become professors of surgery of chiefs of surgery. This

percentage is actually low as only 32.3% of general surgery residents and 7.3% of full professors

in the United States are women (Frangou). Epstein also says that many women are never even

given the opportunity to reach those positional levels. This shows how many female surgeons are

essentially held back because they are not given the same equal opportunities as men to become

these professors or chiefs, especially if their male superiors are choosing men over them. In

2013, a female surgeon who worked for Massachusetts General Hospital, sued the hospital for

gender discrimination she faced from male coworkers. (Kowalczyk). The female surgeon said

that the chief of surgery was open about saying he preferred to higher males over females for

surgical positions in the hospital and that women in the hospital sometimes faced sexist

comments or were simply ignored by their male superiors (Kowalczyk). In many cases, the

problem is that male surgeons are chosen over females or that female surgeons are not seen as

capable. By not having equal opportunities to reach the same positions in medicine as men,

female surgeons face more adversity, on top of the adversity they already deal with.

Women do face more hardships than men as surgeons because of the eggshells that they

constantly have to walk on in order to feel equal to their male coworkers. Many female surgeons

have to act a certain way in order to be respected, must deal with juggling their children and

demanding career as surgeons, face sexist comments, and feel subordinate to their male

coworkers as many males are chosen over them time and time again. Although, the level of
 Martin 4

gender equality in medicine has gotten significantly better in the last two decades, it is still

difficult for women in many places to reach the same positions as men in surgery. Even though

surgery is seen as the most difficult field of medicine, that does not mean that female surgeons

are not as capable or more capable than men to be surgeons, chiefs of surgery or professors of

surgery. As surgery and technology continue to advance, more women need to become a part of

the surgical field and not have to feel like their road to becoming a surgeon is harder than a

man’s.

In conclusion, the only way to combat this issue is to shed light on it. Many solutions

may only prove to give women special rights and not equal rights as surgeons. For example, if

medical schools or residency programs were to shorten the amount of time that women had to go

or give them breaks so that they could bear children, then they would be getting special

privileges that males surgeons do not. Women know that medicine comes with many struggles

and they don’t expect it to be easy, but they shouldn’t have more struggles on top of the ones that

already come with being a doctor. By bringing this issue to light, women will continue to climb

the ladder in medicine and in time, face only struggles that a surgeon should face, and not the

added struggles that female surgeons today have.

 Martin 5

Works Cited

Cassell, Joan. "Doing Gender, Doing Surgery: Women Surgeons in a Man's Profession."

Human Organization, vol. 56, no. 1, 1997, pp. 47-52. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.cpcc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/201151207?acco

untid=10008, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.17730/humo.56.1.2362n66w4522428h.

Epstein, Nancy. "Discrimination Against Female Surgeons is Still Alive: Where are the

Full Professorships and Chairs of Departments?" Surgical Neurology International,

vol. 8, 2017. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.cpcc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/193619193

?a countid=10008, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/sni.sni_90_17.

Frangou, Christina. “Surgeons (Women and Men) Say It's Time to Close Surgery's Gender Gap.”

General Surgery News. McMahon Publishing, 6 Feb. 2018,

https://www.generalsurgerynews.com/In-the-News/Article/02-18/Surgeons-Women-and

Men-Say-It-s-Time-to-Close-Surgery-s-Gender-Gap/46919?sub=2F10E432441735F41

C78CC6CDB6D8ECDBE22B01D93E95F3569347DA5E5463C&enl=true

Jones, Valerie A. “Why Aren't There More Women Surgeons?” JAMA, American Medical

Association, 2 Feb. 2000, jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1843229.

Kowalczyk, Liz. "Female Surgeons Note Gains, Subtle Gender Bias." Boston Globe, Feb

25, 2013. ProQuest,

http://ezproxy.cpcc.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1311806697?acc

ountid=10008.