The field of medicine has been constantly progressing through the centuries with surgery, as one of its most fundamental structure of medicine. Cutting people open to find the harm and relieving them of it. But as the field of surgery progress over time; the surgical environment has developed a gender sphere that makes it difficult for women to become surgeons. The glass ceiling is a political metaphor that exists to explain the gender disadvantages within disciplined jobs (The Glass Ceiling Effect*). Women today, regardless of their qualifications face an obstacle that “appear[s] to be a distinctively gender phenomenon” (1) in any highly disciplined jobs, especially in the field of surgery.
An estimated of 8.6 million surgeries are performed yearly, and this profession is largely responsible for increasing the longevity across America (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). There is an average of 160,000 surgeons across America according to the American College of Surgeons and although the percentage of female surgeons have become more prominent, female surgeons represent only about 21% in the field of surgery as of 2008 (American College of Surgeons Health Policy Research Institute, 28). As the field of surgery progresses, the glass ceiling seems to have become more prominent, as evident by the previous statistic. Concerns are raising debates about whether the medical field is slowly cutting women out, especially in surgery, contributing in conflicting opinions on why there is a limited amount of women as surgeons.
The old-age debate is targeted towards women who are usually confined to two conflicts of whether they should find jobs or become mothers. Especially in an ever-progressive economy, it has become more imp...
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...d if it may be resolved in the near future. The perception of females becoming surgeons usually is seen as rare and respected but the weight of the negative stigma also marks boundaries that keep females in, limiting the power of females and restricting medical advances surgically. It through this research that I will explore the gap of why the social norm has made it difficult for women who are equally as qualified to fulfill surgical positions and roles in the hospitals as well as their male counterparts. Based on the research I’ve done so far, I will argue that society and the field of surgery is primarily responsible for generating the glass ceiling that females struggle to overcome. However, in regards to the public view and their response, I also believe that the world of medicine needs to desperately expand and progress to accommodate females.
Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard Medical School graduate and writer for The New Yorker, phenomenally illustrates the unknown side of healthcare professions in his book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. By exploring the ethical and analytical aspects of medicine while entertaining readers with relatable anecdotes, Gawande impresses on his audience the importance of recognizing the wonders of the healthcare field, as well as the fallibility of those within it.
If you could think about how many stars there is up in the sky, that is how many possible surgeries there is. I have chosen to do the topic “Orthopedic” Surgical Technician. The medical terminology “Ortho” means “bones”. The term “orthopedics” means
During the 1950s and 1960s, increasing numbers of married women entered the labor force, but in 1963 the average working woman earned only 63% of what a man made. That year The Feminine Mystique, a critique of middle-class patterns was published. The author encouraged readers to seek new roles and responsibilities, to seek their own personal and professional identities rather than have them defined by the outside, male-dominated society.
The “glass ceiling” is a barrier to advancement that affects women when they work in
One of many struggles women who wanted to pursue the medical field had to go through, was being blocked from what they first intended to be. According to the book, 100 Most Important Women in the 20th century, many females who wanted to be important doctors like surgeons, had to change because men and/or other people including family, friends, and peers convinced them to
The tones go off, there is a scramble for shirts, ties, and boots. Dispatch announces a motor vehicle accident five blocks away. EMTs and Paramedics climb into ambulances. Police are reporting multiple personal injuries. There is a rush of adrenaline through all those involved. The street comes alive with flashing red and white lights and screaming sirens. Ambulances tear down the street to the accident scene. They arrive to find four cars involved in a high-speed collision. There are seven people involved in this particular accident. Additional trucks are requested and the original scene repeats itself as three more teams join the first two at the scene. Emergency personnel work to disentangle patients from the wreckage of the vehicles. One patient is in full traumatic arrest. Three emergency medical workers operate together to intubate the patient and start IVs while they perform CPR and set up the defibrillator, while simultaneously searching for the patients identification. The team lifts the patient into the back of the ambulance, and while still compressing the patient's chest, breathing for the patient, administering medications, and defibrillating all in an effort to help this patient avoid death, they speed off to the hospital. The EMTs and paramedics in the back of the ambulance continue their efforts enroute to the hospital while the ambulance ricochets off bumps and the workers are bounced all around the back of the vehicle. They finally arrive at the facility where one of the members of the team tells the triage nurse what is happening. They take the patient into a trauma room and lift the patient from their stretcher to the hos...
Medical dramas have been around a long time and changes have been made to recreate and reinforce our society. Women and people of color could not and were not physicians on television, film and in the Western world back in the less progressive years. Now there are women, gay people, African Americans, Asians, and many more minorities playing doctors. Television has certain portrayals of femininity and masculinity, even if it has come far. On the episode of Grey’s Anatomy, “Rise Up”, Dr. Owen Hunt asks Dr. Callie Torres about two female surgeons and who he should chose to participate in the solo surgery. One of the candidates, Dr. Cristina Yang, comes into the room to explain the charts to both doctors. She later leaves when asked to go update
Through the course of history, women have accomplished many feats surpassing stereotypes of being only useful for their vanity. The scholar Chisholm-Burns states that “it is clear that gender bias remains a challenge for women in the workplace, particularly as they try to move up the career ladder” (312). Society has made it hard, but not impossible, for women to accomplish certain goals. Burns continues by giving an explanation of the term “glass ceiling”, which is another form of discrimination towards women. “Glass
The institutionalized discrimination of women in the work place is nothing new or unheard of. The brunt of it has happened fairly recently as women began to enter the labor market in force less than a century ago. The affect of this discrimination has had long lasting, generation spanning affects, but as time has passed and feminism spread, the gender-gap has slowly begun to shrink.
The improvements in surgeries, such as less invasive surgeries, having more ways to lessen pain, and surgeries having fewer side effects, has dramatically changed how the Ameri-cans react to the idea of surgery. The idea of less invasive surgery came about in America not soon after improvements in France, “a cascade of events was set in motion that impact on the performance of surgery in the 21st century. The concepts of "surgery through a scope" dated to the end of the 19th century but the technology of the late 20th century made laparoscopic surgery and minimally invasive surgery not an isolated event but a reality,” (Mack, Minimally Invasive). This is a major improvement that makes surgery more appealing to Americans. This same article tells of the problems of invasive surgery, “The pain, discomfort, and disability, or other morbidity as a result of surgery is more frequently due to trauma involved in gaining access to the ar...
Since the time women were eligible to be an employee of a workplace, they have become victims of discrimination. Discrimination is the practice of treating a person or group of people differently from other people (Webster, 2013). Thousands of women have suffered from discrimination in workplaces because they are pregnant, disabled, or of the opposite sex. It is crazy to think that someone would fire a woman because she became pregnant and needed to have some work adjustments ("Pregnancy and parenting,"). A woman goes through a lot to give birth to children, and men will never understand the complications a mother encounters during the pregnancy. Sadly, males think that pregnant women don’t make a working hand, which is totally wrong.
Women have been considered the weaker gender since the beginning of time. The distinctions between men and women, such as roles within the family, have prevented women from achieving societal progress as men. Gender inequality and the Glass Wall Effect are known inhibiting factors in upward mobility within the workplace. Men experience professional upward movement, both in wages and position, while women are trapped by glass ceilings and glass walls. Education and professional achievements are not deciding factors and women who assert themselves can also be seen as bossy. History tells a story of progression and a continual struggle for women to be seen and considered as equals.
Today, most people perceive nursing as a women profession. Men who enter this field have been looked at as outcasts. Many individuals feel that a man does not belong in a "feminine? profession. I believe that statement to be untrue and unfair. The issue of gender discrimination in nursing is the same as other professions. The only difference is nursing is dominated by women, and men are the minority fighting for equality.
The medical profession is an example of changed attitudes in the 19th and 20th centuries about what was regarded as suitable work for women. Prior to the 1800s there were almost no medical schools, and virtually any enterprising person could practice medicine. Indeed, obstetrics was the domain of women.
...ld. Women are most often stereotyped as only being nurses or other lower-end health professionals. There is a huge difference between the percent of males and the percent of females when it comes to more advanced medical fields. A study conducted by Reed and Fischer found that women are not promoted at the same rate as men in medical fields. They feel that women are under-represented in higher medical positions. The CEJA found that there is a large difference in salaries between men and women. Studies show that the average female physician earns 34 percent less than her male counterpart. Female physicians are more likely to earn a relatively low income and are less likely to gain a relatively higher income. For example, while 19 percent of female physicians earned less than $60,000, only 7 percent of male physicians earned less than that same amount (CEJA, 1994).