Annoying Things That Female Physicians Have to Deal With

The face of the physician workforce is changing.

According to the American Medical Association, over half of the MD graduates in 2019-2020 identified as women. Despite this, medicine as a field remains a man's world. The rigor and length of training, combined with our society's continued general reliance on women as primary caretakers, makes work-life balance difficult to achieve. In addition, training extends well into reproductive years for women who wish to have children, and several studies show that one quarter of female physicians report being diagnosed with infertility.

And then there's the everyday stuff, the experiences women seem to have disproportionately that make our jobs just a little harder. Things like sexual harassment in the workplace, difficulty asserting our roles for patients, and strained relationships with other women in the workplace.

As the demographics of medicine shift, I hope the culture does too. I'd love to work in a culture in which, rather than label the women who manage to "do it all" as superwomen, we acknowledge that a diverse workforce may have different needs. Until then, I'll probably continue to grumble and make comics like these.

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Cite this: Shirlene Obuobi. Annoying Things That Female Physicians Have to Deal With - Medscape - Mar 08, 2022.