Medical profession male-dominated?

Press, 20 May 1987, Page 28

Medical profession male-dominated?

PA Auckland About half of New Zealand’s first-year medical students are women, yet few make it to the maledominated “higher echelons” of the profession, doctors were told this : week. Reverse discrimination was one of three solutions to this problem, Dr Robyn Briant, of Auckland, told about 200 delegates at the New Zealand Medical Association’s centennial conference which began in Auckland yesterday. I Another solution was to recruit more women into .the profession, Dr Briant said. “Women doctors lose

out and the community is short-changed by its investment in women.” There were signs that within the next decade more women would be in the higher echelons but there was no guarantee they would reach their full potential, she said. The imbalance was caused by a lack of examples to which women students could aspire and society’s expectations of women in the wife-and-mother role. She also took the N.Z.M.A. to task for “sexist language” used in the profession, such as manpower instead of workforce.