Our own worst enemy
Everyone should read this article in detail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/opinion/12sibert.html
Opinion
Don’t Quit This Day Job
By KAREN S. SIBERT
Published: June 11, 2011
For female doctors, the decision to go part time isn’t just personal; it has consequences for patients and the public.
Afterwards, should read http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wont-hurt-bit/201106/the-mommy-wars-medical-edition.
The bottom line is this: the top article's writer, a female anesthesiologist from California, asserts that the fact that female physicians are choosing to work part-time is hurting patients and the economy, and has a negative impact overall on a societal level. She plainly suggests that women need to choose between being a doctor or being a mother, and that both is not possible.
The bottom article writes an intelligent response.
I applaud Dr. Au, the latter writer, for keeping her wits about her enough to write an eloquent response, when the only thing I could say after I read Dr Sibert's article was "fuck you."
There are so many things wrong with Sibert's views, I don't even know where to start.
Dr Sibert's views are archaic, and are perpetuating the very problem that women in medicine have faced ever since they set foot inside the boys' club, as well as effectively holding back any progress we are making in restructuring the world to finally accept women as something other than homemakers. It's true that in her generation, when women physicians first began going forward, they were in no position to negotiate, and had to prove that they could be just as smart, hard working and dedicated as a male counterpart. But these women, these pioneers, have paved the way for the rest of us, and thirty years later, I applaud the fact that in this post-feminist world women don't feel like they need to prove something, and are secure enough to make the choice to work less. By making her inflammatory judgments on other people's choices, she is setting back any progress by a hundred years.
50% of graduating physicians these days are women. The paradigm has to shift to accomodate that, not the other way around.
Besides that, the face and shape of medicine is changing. We have been made into a business and a service industry. Tit for tat with out patients. The kind of idea that being a doctor is a way of line, and the days of the 110 hour work week are over. There aren't any absentee father doctosr anymore. Therefore, women AND men are looking for work-life balance. It's a new generation of doctors who see things in a different way, and Dr Sibert is not keeping up with the times.
Dr Au asks the most obvious question: don't men physicians have children too? After that first year of life, when nursing, recovery from labor and delivery, etc, are done, shouldn't parents be sharing in the responsibility? Why does it fall on the shoulders of women to make that choice? Which, by the way, shouldn't have to be a choice at all.
And overall, it is apalling but undeniably true that women are getting judged no matter what choice they make. As Dr Au notes, if they're leaving the home to work, they are bad mothers. If they are becoming stay at home moms, they are perpetuating a stereotype and throwing away years of progress made by the feminist movement. If they try to do both, they are excelling at nothing, and doing a half assed job at everything.
Unfortunately, it is true that this society and culture runs primarily on money. And it is true, on a big scale, as far as employers go, that women are a different type of investment than men are, in any large business, including medicine. But you know what? Being a woman is what it is. We have a certain biological role that men don't have. This does not mean we need to be made to choose between that role and other forms of fulfillment. As I say, the paradigm needs to change. And I think most of the new physicians see it this way, even though Dr Sibert doesn't.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/opinion/12sibert.html
Opinion
Don’t Quit This Day Job
By KAREN S. SIBERT
Published: June 11, 2011
For female doctors, the decision to go part time isn’t just personal; it has consequences for patients and the public.
Afterwards, should read http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wont-hurt-bit/201106/the-mommy-wars-medical-edition.
The bottom line is this: the top article's writer, a female anesthesiologist from California, asserts that the fact that female physicians are choosing to work part-time is hurting patients and the economy, and has a negative impact overall on a societal level. She plainly suggests that women need to choose between being a doctor or being a mother, and that both is not possible.
The bottom article writes an intelligent response.
I applaud Dr. Au, the latter writer, for keeping her wits about her enough to write an eloquent response, when the only thing I could say after I read Dr Sibert's article was "fuck you."
There are so many things wrong with Sibert's views, I don't even know where to start.
Dr Sibert's views are archaic, and are perpetuating the very problem that women in medicine have faced ever since they set foot inside the boys' club, as well as effectively holding back any progress we are making in restructuring the world to finally accept women as something other than homemakers. It's true that in her generation, when women physicians first began going forward, they were in no position to negotiate, and had to prove that they could be just as smart, hard working and dedicated as a male counterpart. But these women, these pioneers, have paved the way for the rest of us, and thirty years later, I applaud the fact that in this post-feminist world women don't feel like they need to prove something, and are secure enough to make the choice to work less. By making her inflammatory judgments on other people's choices, she is setting back any progress by a hundred years.
50% of graduating physicians these days are women. The paradigm has to shift to accomodate that, not the other way around.
Besides that, the face and shape of medicine is changing. We have been made into a business and a service industry. Tit for tat with out patients. The kind of idea that being a doctor is a way of line, and the days of the 110 hour work week are over. There aren't any absentee father doctosr anymore. Therefore, women AND men are looking for work-life balance. It's a new generation of doctors who see things in a different way, and Dr Sibert is not keeping up with the times.
Dr Au asks the most obvious question: don't men physicians have children too? After that first year of life, when nursing, recovery from labor and delivery, etc, are done, shouldn't parents be sharing in the responsibility? Why does it fall on the shoulders of women to make that choice? Which, by the way, shouldn't have to be a choice at all.
And overall, it is apalling but undeniably true that women are getting judged no matter what choice they make. As Dr Au notes, if they're leaving the home to work, they are bad mothers. If they are becoming stay at home moms, they are perpetuating a stereotype and throwing away years of progress made by the feminist movement. If they try to do both, they are excelling at nothing, and doing a half assed job at everything.
Unfortunately, it is true that this society and culture runs primarily on money. And it is true, on a big scale, as far as employers go, that women are a different type of investment than men are, in any large business, including medicine. But you know what? Being a woman is what it is. We have a certain biological role that men don't have. This does not mean we need to be made to choose between that role and other forms of fulfillment. As I say, the paradigm needs to change. And I think most of the new physicians see it this way, even though Dr Sibert doesn't.
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