In August 2004, during the holiday period that the British press dubs the “silly season” as newspapers struggle to fill their pages with hard news, Dame Carol Black, then president of the Royal College of Physicians, the UK’s oldest and most distinguished medical college, raised an almighty storm. She suggested that the growing number of women in medicine was altering the practice of medicine itself, and risked the profession losing status and influence.
Women, she said, were choosing a particular set of medical specialisms that avoided the longest hours and most commitment. Their greater tendency to take career breaks – not just to have children but to raise them – and their greater propensity to work part-time, raised questions about whether they would ever get to the top of the profession in sufficient numbers. Would they spend the hours and gain the experience necessary to become leading academics, senior medical and clinical managers while also playing the political roles that medicine needs filled if it is to be represented? And if they did not do so, would the practice of medicine suffer and, along with it, patient care?
