Gender equity – we found the will but have we lost our way

Dr Tessa Kennedy, Chair, AMACDT, says that gender inequity remains a significant challenge within the medical profession, as in much of our society. We’ve had gender parity among medical students since 1990, yet the trickle up approach hasn’t worked. Progress to parity at supervisory and leadership levels has stalled. There are large gender pay gaps for equally trained and skilled professionals in all craft groups. And even where women doctors are primary breadwinners for their families, they tend to shoulder a greater burden of childcare and domestic work.

The AMA Council of Doctors in Training is planning to host a Gender equity in medicine roundtable in March 2019. The Roundtable will look more broadly at the cultural and practical barriers to the achievement of gender equity in medicine, and learn from how other industries have successfully shaped culture and systems to encourage it in their workplaces, and how this might translate to changing medical workplaces and culture. .