Why are so many obs/gynae doctors male??

[dontlaugh]

Bearing in mind medical students are now roughly 50/50 in college and the numbers of qualifying GPs are majority female. i often wondered about this and am now brave enough to post here.
Discuss!

The example you give would indicate a bad problem.

However, " most of them" ? Really?

Strange in light of your article Sakura that in the US psychiatry and obstetrics/gynaecology are more likely to attract women than men as career choices.

Having seen an elderly former neighbour (who was Polish co-incidentally) go through treatment and eventually die from cancer that started as cervical cancer, and having a close relative whose cervical cancer was detected by a pap smear in time for treatment to be effective, I think that having regular pap smears is something women should do. Not that we should be coerced into it though. But to refuse to have a pap smear done out of anger at the medical profession or fear that you are somehow being led down the garden path for the sake of someone else's profit is not very sensible.

I think the anger at obstetricians and gynaecologists is misplaced. Women and men alike were at the mercy of the entire medical profession surgical tools of yesteryear Note the ritual circumcision knife (maybe I shouldn't open this particular can of worms). Disadvantaged groups of all kinds, both men and women, have been affected by the 'profession's' disregard for the humanity of other people, or their own. The story of HeLa cells is most instructive. Henrietta Lacks (nee Loretta Pleasant) was a poor black woman whose cancerous cells just happened to be capable of multiplying and thriving in a lab.

This comment about the article in the link stood out, for me -- "I started to read this book and I can't put it down. I can't imagine the injustice done to patients in the past and the controversy it started concerning ethics. Thanks for writing this book and opening our eyes to the horrors of the past. I've only read 1/3 of the book and I'm having some difficulty in understanding how some of our scientists didn't see the ethical complexities. Yes, the Nuremburg ethics should be observed by everyone ." Other comments to the effect that it was all to the good are startling to me for the lack of insight into the ethical ramifications of the treatment of the cells.

Hi everyone well at my antenatal appointment today I asked this very question to the gynaecologist who informed me that gynaecology is a surgical speciality and more men are drawn to it. That was her response, she said its changing a bit now and more women are specialising, I'm Ireland btw.

Hope your appointment went well, PamBeesly.

I agree with your doctor's perception that surgery has an attraction for male doctors as opposed to female: I think this has something to do with the perception of doctor as heroic interventionist (like firemen, GI Joe, Spiderman, etc) but I also think the hours involved, the possibility that you will be stuck in a theatre when your children need dinner/homework supervision/being put to bed (not to mention the physical possibility of having children in the first place) comes into it moreso for women than for men, who can apparently still choose a career path with no thought to family life or how they will manage to combine work with it.

I'm currently umming about having another baby because I now live abroad and all the OBGYNS are male on the island. In the UK I had a HB and wish I could do the same here but can't.it was and still is very important to me to have only women with me when I am getting antenatal care and to avoid VEs. This was emminently possible in the UK but although there are female MW here it seems to be the norm to have a doctor at both antenatal appointments and to deliver the baby hence unavoidable male presence.

I found the discussion unthread of why more men are in the profession reassuring. but I still really don't want to have a male anywhere near my private parts, even when I am having a baby. I have a survivor backstory which explains my fear and revulsion.

I guess I need to work on this otherwise DS wil be an only child.
Anyway just posted to thank people for the helpful discussion on motives and practicalities of being an OBGYN

Upthread, not unthread, stupid ipd

Miffster I hope it works out for you

I think that some people go into medicine and then discover that they don't actually like sick people - especially old sick people. Ob- gyn you are dealing with young, relatively healthy women.

And this comes as more of a surprise to male trainees than to female (unscientifiic opinion based on the student docs I encountered at uni - 2 of whom decided to drop out and do computer science instead)

I think in education systems where children go straight into medical studies (and I say children because 18 is really very childlike in many ways) from school, you are more likely to find candidates for the profession who have been steered in that direction by parents rather than candidates who are sincerely interested in medicine for better reasons.

Students in Ireland (when I was in secondary anyhow) who were really good at maths and looked as if they would achieve a huge number of Leaving Cert points tended to be applying for Veterinary Medicine, then Medicine, the Physiotherapy, Engineering -- the Irish system works thus, rendering the caveat about applying based on anticipated number of points or last year's offers/points needed dead in the water. Not really a recipe for a doctor who cares.

Scroll down on the left hand column to the "How places are allocated" link.

As a fellow Irish person mathanxiety I see what you mean about the points system. Medicine doesn't always seem like its a vocation for some of the kids who do get the points, in the end I'm sure it doesn't make them any lesser than their colleagues but maybe their passion isn't there from the start, I'm sure its not always the case though.
I always had/still have 'mathanxiety' while I was at school, then went on to do an economics degree...I think mathanxiety should be my name :)

When I was in uni I once asked a medical student friend of mine this very question, and she said, "Well, you wouldn't want to be looking at THAT all day." I was a bit shocked to be honest. I am sure most women doctors who decide against obs and gynae don't do so because they are repulsed by lady bits though.

There are lots of female pathologists, the hours during training can still be pretty bad. It is closer to office type hours at consultant levels though and it is possible to be part time (possible but not easy).

Most of the obs/gynae consultants I've come into contact through work have been male, however the numbers of women do seem to be increasing.
What I have found interesting has been the gradual change in my speciality where about 70% of the staff are women but only about 20% are in senior roles. This has been improving though its noticable there's seeming relationship here between delayed children (or none) in the 30 y/os and those in their 50s who 'caught up'.

Doesn't really matter. If one is male and saves your life one day I doubt you'd be ungrateful

Is that the extent to which you can contribute to this discussion edd1337?

Note that the OP is not

"Would you be ungrateful if a male ob/gyn saved your life?"

but a question about the ratios of fe/male ob/gyn Drs.

afaik, as long as posts are not personal, etc., (see mn guidelines) all contributions are welcome whether you agree with the pov or not, or whether the post directly answers the OP or not, NellieForbush.

I would be interested to know if there are surgical or other specialties where women predominate or specialties where the ratio is more equal.

None of the surgical specialties have an equal or predominately female ratio. I think the current percentage across the whole field is around the 5% mark. I actually think O&G probably has the largest number of women in it and certainly most of the registrars seem to be female (I know not very scientific) whereas I can think of only a handful or so (certainly less than 10) female registrars in other surgical departments I've worked...