Why are so many obs/gynae doctors male??

A medical student told me that obs are wannabe surgeons (mostly male) who arent good enough to get into mainstream surgery (vv competitive). Therefore it is a lot of mens fallback choice in the way it isnt for women.

Also some people seem to think that all obgyns are consultants. Not true and in fact the vast majority of c sections are done by registrars.

To add to Nellie, the earliest you could start specialist ob training is 7 years after entering medical school (assuming 5 year degree). A midwife enters a 3 year degree to train totally focused on midwifery.

A lot of midwives only train to be midwives in their 30s, 40s or even older. So their children may be a bit older when they start work meaning that unsocial hours isn't as big an issue.

Elephants

Difference between midwifery and Ob&Gyn (my thoughts, not a statistic).

Many men and women go into medicine and decide much later what they would like to specialise in and potentially surprise themselves when they find they are interested in Obs.

Going into midwifery is totally different. The aim is to care for women and babies during "normal" pregnancies and deliveries (and I would say empower women to have the pregnancy and birth that is best for them)

The role is so different.

It's a combination of the years required for education coinciding with the main childbearing opportunity for women, which means women have to think very hard about specialising in any medical field, and the hours of OBs especially -- until you get to your 50s or so and may be able to have a private practice with others, you will be on call and have to be available at all hours due to the nature of the practice. Same goes for A & E specialists, neurosurgeons who do A & E, etc.

And let's face it, most women don't have wives. A friend who is training for A & E work is due any day with her second child but couldn't have managed to have even one without her mother leaving home to go and live with her and her H when the first was born -- they then moved to a teaching hosp closer to the GPs' home so that her parents could be there around the clock to take care of their little DS and the baby due later this year. She looks haggard and terribly tired now, in her third trimester, with the horrible hours. It is a major physical slog for anyone, let alone a pregnant woman.

By contrast, another friend who is a maternity nurse has been able to combine night shift work and having three children with not much bother, especially since they all got to school age. Her DH was on duty at home all night when they were babies and they hired a nanny for 7 or 8 daytime hours.

I was being facetious, of course

So, it's just common or garden patriarchy in action. Only those who have someone else to do the thinking about the rest of their lives may be let into the club, Or else face burn out and/or opprobrium.

When I was a teen, there was a lot of nurses' accommodation at the hospital, although I'm not sure that is the case now. Would a possible solution be for there to be family accommodation for doctors, midwives etc more on site. They could then put childcare on site too, possibly 24 hours, to allow primary carers to work anti-social hours.

Male consultants have families, but many of them will have relied heavily on wives / extended family / childcare providers during training - female consultants don't always make career choices that mean they see less of their children.

A urologist will treat both male and female patients so "willyologist" is incorrect. As has been pointed out, women also have a urinary system.

Where I currently work, there are 3 o&g consultants, 2 male; 3 urologists, 2 male; 5 general surgeons, 3 male.

More and more female registrars are coming through the system, it's only a matter of time before the numbers start evening out.

there is certainly a lot of 'ooh, i don't think i would like a male midwife' on mumsnet too!

elephants - nope, midwives, the same as nurses, work shifts - they are at work from x in the morning to y in the evening then they hand over to the night team and go home. Consultant surgeons, when they are on call, may go home at 5 or 6 pm and not be disturbed all night, may be up all night with a difficult operation and then be expected to do a clinic from 9am, or may get home at 10pm, get into bed then get called out again at midnight and have to go back in as the registrar needs help in theatre.
Also midwives and nurses get to choose when the majority of their shifts are (some will do mainly nights so they can put the kids to bed, go to work, be home to take the kids to school then sleep til afternoon school run time) so it's actually very family - friendly

dontlaugh - no, sexual thrills have not been mentioned in this thread and I apologise if you thought I was implying that that's what you were getting at. I have seen it questioned on threads here in the past though and it really makes me angry - because I am female no-one even thinks of accusing me of being a paedophile because I look at small childrens genitalia pretty frequently as part of my job but some people imply that, just because they are male, gynaecologists who are every bit as professional and dedicated to their job as I am must be a little bit pervy.

Elephants I think that the MW thing stems from the origin if midwifery, and as it is a caring, supportive role that is seen as a woman's job, it is one very few men are attracted to

Well nursing and midwifery are predominately female roles. Yes it's crap hours and you know that when you sign up for it. But if I had a choice of specialising in an area that didn't involve working weekends, etc then I'd probably do that. Well I would if I'd still earn the same, but if I was a clinic midwife I'd lose about a third of my pay.

But if I was a dr and deciding on a specialism and in a position to choose between something more 9-5 and obstetric chaos I might decide that ent looked fascinating.

I asked a male reg once why he chose obs and gynae. He said he never thought he'd like it but as part of his junior dr rotation he was allocated a placement and he loved it. He said he'd never have asked for a placement in obs. He said there was a fantastic variety of work that you don't get anywhe else. Surgery without actually been a surgeon, all the oncology stuff, infertility challenges and then all the obs stuff as well. He said it's very rewarding.

Ah, but Aye many male registrars have wife's who become SAHM to take up the slack if they choose to have children while training.

Thanks for the insight Sally. :) Any thoughts on the midwife thing?

Can we get started on the campaign to officially rename that speciality now please?

Sally Thanks for your posts, they are very interesting. It was hard enough becoming established as a female civil engineer (undergraduate intake is about 20% female) with site work/v early starts and site placements all over the country. Along with all the "Unusual job for a girl..." comments and patriachy. Certainly influenced why I didn't have any DC until I was 37.

There is actually also a shortage of midwives, Elephants, particularly of midwives who can attend births in hospital, rather than say community midwives. It's just reflected as a general shortage of staff since it is an almost 100% female profession rather than an imbalance between genders.

When I worked in the medical field and colleagues were saying that our local maternity hospital was totally oversubscribed. I said 'well, why don't they just hire more midwives since they're cheaper than doctors / ob-gyns?'. Response was that there's a shortage of experienced midwives as it's a tough area to attract trainees into because of the anti-family / anti-social hours and high stress.

I agree Viva that figure does sound implausible. sparrow is spot on. It is a surgical speciality and I do think (although have no figures to back me) that as far as surgical specialities go women are quite well represented in obs/gyn. Whereas there are virtually no female urologists (willyologists )

But the surgical speciality thing is more complex than just erratic, unpredicatable working hours. More than any other branch of medicine, the surgical specialities are very much still 'bastions of maleness' and women who choose to enter into them do (and have to have) balls of steel. (For want of a better expression )

i can't believe it's 98% as the consultant i saw antenatally with DS was a woman, one of her registrars was a woman, and the consultant who delivered DS by c-section was a woman.

even with DD (going back a few years now) i think i saw 3 different female consultants/registrars, and maybe 6 or 7 male ones?

Don't the male consultants have families, then?

I think the surgical specialties are less attractive to parents who expect to be the main carer, owing to the need for OOH (plastic surgery being a big exception to this).

There are plenty of women consultants in other specialties and women GPs, so full, rewarding medical careers are being achieved.

I think the "obstacles" are more to do with the desire/ability of individuals to take on the anti-social hours aspect. That may need to be tackled in wider society, not just in one (of the many) careers with inherently anti-social hours.

But does anyone know the figures for women plastic surgeons? The hours are much more predictable, and so I cannot see the logistic problems having the same impact. It would be interesting to see if they even up, as one would expect.

elephants - once again, being a willyologist (aka urologist though your name is better as ladies have urine and urethras too!!) is a surgical speciality so the majority are male

In response to other posts - being a female consultant and having a family in a medical specilaity these days is an awful lot easier than it used to be - it's a lot easier to go part time, as a junior it is shift work rather than 24 hour on calls etc so becoming much more 'female friendly'. Being a female consultant in a surgical speciality is much harder becase, as I mentioned earlier, you miss out on a lot more if you are part time and also the better jobs are very competitive, and the time it is most competitive is when you are at registrar level (ie in late 20's to 30's) so if you choose to have babies at that point, all your make colleagues will be getting things published and what have you and making their CV so much more impressive.

Also, consultant surgeons get called in at 2am far more often than consultant physicians and obviously unless they are doing an out of hours shift GP's don't get called in at all.

That should read sonographers - bizarre auto spell checker! Maybe she trains monographers as well who write monographs on obstetrics...

But then how come the vast majority (AFAIK) of midwives are still female?

Surely they face similar barriers in terms of family friendly hours as you say? Often midwives and OG docs are working at exactly the same times. But one is overwhelmingly male and the other, female.