Gender Divide in Healthcare Professions

Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - 1:00 - 5:30 p.m. CST
Rhoades Auditorium

Healthcare is one of the fastest growing segments of U.S. employment, and also one of the most gender-segregated. Women comprise over 75% of healthcare workers but only 34% of practicing physicians. Females are under-represented within the higher-status physician specialties and in leadership roles throughout the healthcare sector.

Gender segregation begins early in children’s lives. It plays a key role in career selection and in gender pay gaps across every industry. The existing medical hierarchy was founded largely upon gender separation and stereotypes—women as caregivers and nurturers vs. men as leaders and doers—and creates performance expectations that are difficult to overcome. This legacy creates a challenge to interprofessional collaboration, which requires a flattening of hierarchies and unimpeded, two-way flow of communication.

This symposium will dissect the origins of gender segregation in professional life and its consequences for both individual achievement and healthcare quality. It will focus on the specific barriers to successful male-female collaboration and highlight tactics that bridge these divides. For example, the growing prevalence of women physicians has attenuated the power difference between medicine and nursing. Increasing gender diversity in other healthcare professions will have synergistic impact on workplace disparities. Efforts to enhance diversity and equality among team members will strengthen interprofessional collaboration, improve lifesaving communication, and result in better outcomes for patients and their families.

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