PERCEIVED GENDER-BASED BARRIERS By Kambri Sifford

IN THE MEDICAL FIELD

THE PROBLEM Women in surgery
 THERE ARE REPORTEDLY LESS WOMEN IN THE
SURGICAL FIELD OF MEDICINE
•There has been multiple studies that prove women feel more excluded in the
departments of surgery.
•There are reportedly only 30% of women that pursue surgery
•There is also a gender based pay gap among surgeons
•I propose that we quit the stereotypes in surgery
•We also need to fix the pay gap issue
SOLUTION Step by Step
FIRST STEP
This is going to sound cheesy but as always the first step is accepting that there is a
problem…
SECOND STEP
We as a society need to start encouraging more women to pursue surgery. Women
also need to believe that they are capable of surgery. Women need to go out and
show men that we can be just as good of surgeons as they can.
THIRD STEP
Hospitals and Colleges should set clear and consistent standards, and enforce
accountability for professional behavior.
FOURTH STEP
The fourth and final step is to equalize pay among men and women.
WHO PLAYS A PART IN THIS PLAN Qualifications and such
QUALIFICATIONS OF WHO SHOULD WANT THIS
•Anyone that wants equality
•You don’t have to be the CEO of a hospital to get involved in this proposal. You can
be anyone that just encourages those women that have doubts about becoming
surgeons.
SO WHO EXACTLY PLAYS A PART IN THIS WHOLE
THING?
LETS TALK MONEY Costs and Benefits
COSTS
An obvious cost is to equalize the pay among the men and women. Now there is
about a 35% difference between men's pay and women's pay. The concept is pretty
simple but I don’t think it is all that simple to do without having an uproar. We need to
start easy and it is going to take a long time to get there but the end result will be
worth it.
BENEFITS
One huge benefit is that patients are going to start trusting female surgeons as much
as they might trust male surgeons. If we move to a merit based society going into
surgery wont be a worry and neither will discrimination. People will trust they are
getting a good surgeon who knows what they are doing.
Another benefit is that more women would be surgeons and better yet a fairly payed
surgeon!
LETS TALK ABOUT MONEY… AGAIN Itemized budget
ITEMIZED BUDGET
Description Quantity Price for each Total price

Teachers 1 for each hospital $32 per hour $993,600

246,000 primary care physicians in the United States.

36% female and 64% male of doctors so if we apply that to just primary care physicians that’s
157,440 males and 88,560 females

37.6 billion on males

18 billion on females

If we evenly distribute all the money then that would be 225,922 per year for every primary care
physician regardless of gender
CONCLUSION To sum everything up
IN CONCLUSION…
If we as a society agree that women can be just as great physicians as men can then I
believe all the problems that I have recently addressed will be solved with time.
RESOURCES
http://levelmedicine.org.au/resources/completed-fellowship-papers/gender-equity-in-medical-
specialties/
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/gender-pay-gap-a-problem-for-doctors-and-its-
growing/521088/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002961013000597
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2569703/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2001.00837.x
https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/physicians-by-
gender/?dataView=1&currentTimeframe=0&selectedDistributions=female--
male&selectedRows=%7B%22states%22:%7B%22all%22:%7B%7D%7D,%22wrapups%22:%7B%22u
nited-
states%22:%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc
%22%7D
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-care-news/articles/2018-04-11/report-despite-physician-salary-
increases-wage-gaps-still-exist
https://www.market-inspector.co.uk/blog/2017/06/decrease-gender-pay-gap