August 18, 1920: women gain the right to vote and the in the U.S. to make it the 19th Amendment. This year marks the 100th anniversary of this historic moment. A lot has changed since the 1920s -- four waves of feminism have brought us into the workplace, given us access to the same jobs, careers, and opportunities.
Now more than ever, more women are staking their claim to jobs previously held only by men. are held by women, 16% of enlisted military personnel and are women, and in 2017 for the first time, there were than men. However, only 19% of all surgeons in the U.S. are women, and only 1% of medical department chairs are female. Why?
I felt compelled to write this as a female in medicine and in a surgical residency, as I look around and have more female attendings and co-residents than male. In a report from Medscape in 2019 that polled 20,000 U.S. doctors in 30 specialties, for physicians but the increases have not been equal for male and female doctors. The average male specialists' salary is now for the female specialist. Although it may be true that a larger proportion of women choose part-time work options to raise a family at home, there are other social issues that likely impact salary difference more significantly.
Women may be perceived as being less financially valuable as employees or are less willing to negotiate for a higher salary upon hire. Regardless, minority situations are no excuse for such inequity. The literature shows patients treated by female physicians have than those cared for by male internists. It turns out that patients of female surgeons tend to have lower death rates, fewer postoperative complications, and lower readmissions to hospitals within one month after their procedure as compared to male surgeons. But why? The literature speculates "generally only the very best women at the craft become practicing surgeons.... [S]urgery has traditionally been a male-dominated field and female surgeons operating now have likely had to overcome higher barriers in order to rule the operating room." Yet a that the odds ratio for having been bullied at work was 1.98 for women and higher among female residents and recent graduates.
We continue to overcome stereotypes, societal expectations, wage gaps, and blatant discrimination due to the lack of a Y chromosome. We continue to be compared to , perhaps the most famous nurse in history, when we should be compared to a poorly known name and the first female to become a U.S. medical doctor, who practiced at nearly the exact same time as her nurse counterpart (both passing away nearly 10 years before they had the right to vote). Who then in our current state of inequality nearly 100 years after being considered "equals" will lead us to true equality? We've come a long way, but we have a long way yet to go.
Chandler Hubbard, DPM, is a second-year podiatric surgery resident at Chino Valley Medical Center in Chino, California, as well as a clinical faculty member for the College of Podiatric Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences.