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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020
| Contributor Information
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Women physicians share many concerns common to all physicians, but certain issues interest women in particular. Medscape surveyed more than 3000 women physicians, asking what their major challenges are; how they deal with parenthood, work pressures, and relationships; and what issues absorb them the most. A panel of women physicians helped develop the survey questions.
Sources:
Kaiser Family Foundation. Professionally Active Physicians by Gender. March 2020.
Valbrun M. Women now majority at medical schools. Inside Higher Ed. December 11, 2019.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Work-life balance was by far the most important issue for women. Sixty-four percent of women named it their number-one problem, compared with 43% who cited compensation as their leading concern.
Women also identified some other key concerns: "autonomy," "being replaced by midlevel providers," "burnout," "managing anxiety over professional performance," "the corporate nature of our new leadership," "EHR and administrative nonsense," and "insurance reimbursement." (Women chose and ranked their top three concerns.)
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Combining parenthood and work is more of a challenge for women under 45 than for older women. Women over 45 are more concerned with compensation, gender equity, and age discrimination than are younger women.
"Taking care of aging parents is also a big concern for women over 45." –Cardiologist
"If women look young and pretty, they may not command much respect." –Emergency physician
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Almost two thirds of women physicians said burnout does cause harmful pressure in their relationships. (Thirteen percent of women responded "not applicable.")
"I've been trying to use all my vacation to spend time with my spouse. I'm always apologizing for being late, not being able to go to an event due to my work schedule, and missing out on life with my husband." –Psychiatrist
"I try to be present when I'm home, but to be honest, I don't deal with it very well." –Family physician
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
An overwhelming majority of women physicians said they have had to make such tradeoffs.
"Women are more likely to make work compromises to benefit their families. I won't/can't take a position that would disrupt my husband's community ties, my children's schooling, and relationships with family. That significantly limits my opportunities." –Cardiologist
"Although women physicians have chosen to be doctors, and most love what they do, medicine can be a demanding profession, with work that often requires evening or weekend hours, which most view as personal time," says Hansa Bhargava, MD, pediatrician, WebMD/Medscape senior medical director. "This can lead to 'personal time tradeoffs,' which can be challenging."
Responses do not include the 7% of physicians who said the question was Not Applicable.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Medscape's Physician Compensation Report 2020 showed that male specialists earn 31% more than women and male primary care physicians earn 25% more. In our Women Physicians survey, over one third of women said gender had a negative impact on their income, although more than half of women said that being female has not played a role in keeping their income down.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Lack of ability and confidence to negotiate for a better salary has been cited as one factor that contributes to women earning less pay. According to Katie Donovan, founder of Equal Pay Negotiations, only 30% of women bother to negotiate at all, compared with 46% of men. Some women commented that they didn't know they should negotiate; others feared that if they didn't accept the offer, the employer would look for someone else. Many respondents expressed interest in getting training to become a better negotiator.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
The percentages of women in some of the most highly paid specialties are orthopedics, 9%; urology, 12%; cardiology, 14%; plastic surgery, 19%; and gastroenterology, 21%.
"Medical educators, hospital leaders, and male and female physicians should make continual efforts to ensure that medical and specialty graduates mirror the populations they care for, today more than ever," says Cheryl Pegus, MD, MPH, cardiologist; president, Consumer Health Solutions; and chief medical officer at Cambia Health Solutions. "The increased pipeline of female medical students that began in 2017 will continue to pervade all of the specialties and eventually show up in the number of women physicians in leadership and all the specialties."
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Among women physicians who had children, almost two thirds always or almost always felt conflicted. Most of those under age 45 were more likely to always or often feel conflicted (73%) as opposed to those 45 and over (61%).
"Many women health professionals probably feel conflicted because they want to do their very best in every area of their life," says Bhargava. "Because there is only limited time, they may feel that they don't have enough time with their children."
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
More than half of women physicians say that the number of children they have has been influenced by their work demands and schedule (7% said it was not applicable). Two thirds of millennial physicians (64%) cite work affecting their decisions regarding number of children, a considerably higher proportion than that of Gen Xers (55%) or Boomers (43%).
"I delayed starting a family because of my career. That affected my fertility and made it hard to complete IVF." –Family physician
"I started late, and due to my job change and demands of my private practice, my children were spaced out almost 4 years apart. I probably would have tried to squeeze another in there, but I didn't want to have children while in my late 30s." –Ob/gyn
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Resentment from colleagues seems to be common for women who take their full maternity leave. A 2019 survey of 844 physician mothers showed that physician mothers who took maternity leave got lower peer evaluation scores, lost significant potential income, were penalized with increased call before and after leave, and encountered discrimination.
"My colleagues who are mothers have had a hard time; there is a lack of sympathy and helpfulness when they need time for the children or maternity leave. To get promotions especially, there is pressure to put work over family, and that is just unnatural." –Internist
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Women physicians are about evenly split as to having experienced gender inequity. Hospital-based physicians (61%) are more likely to experience gender inequity than office-based physicians (42%).
"I own my own practice and employ several other physicians. Many women own or manage private practices. Gender equity is not an issue for us." –Pediatrician
"I have experienced gender inequality more from administrators than from my male colleagues. I think it's coming from corporate more than from medical professionals." –Family physician
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Millennial physicians (57%) are more likely than Gen Xers (46%) and Boomers (46%) to say that male colleagues are supportive or very supportive of gender equality in their workplace.
"There are two of us women, and I don't feel they treat us any differently." –Anesthesiologist
"My physician colleagues have been and are supportive of intellectual abilities, but I feel they don't fully understand the uneven distribution of childcare issues on women." –Dermatologist
"Things have changed over the years. As patients prefer a woman provider, more male physicians understand the need for female colleagues, especially bilingual ones, because our patients are often non–English-speaking." –Ob/gyn
Base is women physicians with male colleagues.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
More than half of women physicians believe that they need to behave differently in order to be taken seriously. Of those, a greater percentage are under age 45.
"I feel I don't get taken seriously as a young female physician. If I'm too demanding, I'm a bitch. I have to be overly sweet and passive, otherwise I'm told I'm too aggressive." –Emergency medicine physician
Pegus notes, "Unfortunately, biases are deeply inbred, and the focus of us as women has to be on showing up to do good work and having the resilience to find supporters who are going to help our success. Working hard with those who are supportive of you and help you gain greater confidence, skill sets, and opportunities is a better investment of time and well-being than convincing those who have no real data on or previous interactions with you and yet approach you in a hostile manner."
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Close to half of women physicians are in a leadership or supervisory role. Respondents noted that not everyone wants such a role, and some women have chosen to avoid it in order to create a more flexible schedule. Others maintain that women have fewer opportunities to get ahead.
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Confidence in taking leadership roles increases with age. Boomer physicians (79%) are more likely to cite being very confident/confident than Gen Xers (68%) and millennials (58%).
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
About one third of women physicians are interested in achieving a higher position. Looking at it by age, 52% of those under age 45 are seeking a promotion, as are 29% of those 45 or over. A portion of those over 45 may have already achieved the promotions they sought.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
The majority of women did not feel that gender worked against women for academic achievement (eg, invitations to present, ability to have papers published).
"Around 20% report sexism with respect to their academic opportunities," says Rosalyn E. Plotzker, MD, MPH, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of California, San Francisco. "It's possible that these women had experiences in which their gender overtly prevented them from publishing or presenting at a conference. That 1 in every 5 female medical scholars feel that their gender has prohibited them from achieving their potential is an important indicator that this is still a problem that needs to be addressed by medical institutions internally and the academic medical community at large."
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Nearly one third (31%) of physicians aged 45 years or older have a mentor. Physicians younger than 45 are more likely to have a female mentor than their older counterparts.
"I consider mentors to be one of the main reasons I have achieved as much as I have in my career thus far," says Plotzker. "In many ways it's powerful for a woman to have a female mentor, especially given the potential for gender-based issues that could come up for the trainee, as well as having a strong role model who might be easier to identify with. I have had phenomenal mentors of both genders and not-so-good mentors of both genders."
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Millennial physicians rely more heavily on physician friends and mentors than do their older-generation counterparts. One contributing factor may be that there are more women physicians among the millennial population.
"Sometimes it can be lonely, as I am a minority and there are few minority women psychiatrists to begin with, and far fewer in a leadership experience. There are not many people to speak with or compare notes with." –Psychiatrist
(Respondents could choose more than one answer.)
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Only about one quarter of healthcare organizations provide classes, seminars, mentorship programs, or other activities to support developing women physician leaders.
"The general idea seems to be that if you were a good manager, then you wouldn't need to be trained; experience would spring out of your head like Athena out of Zeus' forehead. That is no way to cultivate good leaders and leads to mismanagement and/or high turnover among unprepared, untrained, and unsupported managers." –Preventive medicine specialist
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
Women spend an average of 8 hours per month learning new technology, including telehealth, software, programs, EHR procedures, and medical devices. Older women spend more time learning about new technology than do younger women physicians.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
More than one third of women say it's important for them to gain more qualifications to maintain their expertise or advance their career. More hospital-based (40%) than office-based women (32%) said they felt they needed more qualifications to remain competitive.
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
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Women Physicians 2020: The Issues They Care About
Leslie Kane, MA | July 15, 2020 | Contributor Information
More than 17,000 physicians told us about their salary, incentive bonus, and denied claims, and how they feel about their career in medicine.Medscape Features Slideshow, May 2020
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Leslie Kane, MA
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Medscape Business of Medicine
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