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Sat 16 Aug, 2008 02:05 pm
August 14, 2008, 8:52 am
Women Remain Scarce in Neurosurgery
Posted by Jacob Goldstein
Women now account for more than 50% of American medical students, but only 10% of neurosurgery residents.
With the number of neurosurgeons per capita declining nationwide in recent years, the field needs to figure out how to recruit more women, says a paper in the September issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery.
The paper presents something of a chicken-and-egg problem, suggesting that part of the reason more women aren’t going into neurosurgery is because there aren’t more women in the field to serve as mentors and role models. Women account for less than 6% of the neurosurgery ranks.
“There is a real public interest in addressing this,” Gail Rosseau, chief of surgery at the Neurologic and Orthopedic Institute of Chicago and one of the authors, told the Chicago Tribune. “At the end of the day, we are all patients and we want to be sure there are adequate numbers of qualified neurosurgeons to take care of us… .”
The paper, written by a group called Women in Neurosurgery at the request of the board of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, calls for promoting women in the field and identifying and eliminating “discriminatory practices,” but it doesn’t really say what those practices might be.
Bonus surgery: For more on the dearth of women in surgery, see this post. It includes a report from a woman who was told, early in her career, “Oh, you are too cute to be a surgeon.”
WSJ