Orthopedics Remains Male Dominated Specialty (Orthopedics This Week)
Men dominate orthopedic surgery but women are catching up—sort of. Orthopedics has the lowest percentage of women in a surgical specialty—with women making up only 4.3% of board-certified orthopedic surgeons, according to Mary I. O’Connor, M.D., Chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida.
In a piece in the August 3 Huffington Post, O’Connor notes that women used to avoid orthopedics under the impression that orthopedic surgeons required a great deal of physical strength to maneuver fractured or dislocated bones and joints back into place. While that might have been true decades ago, advances in medical equipment have shifted the primary requisites from brute strength to manual dexterity, mechanical ability and an aptitude for three-dimensional visualization.
So what is holding back women? An unpublished study by Charles Day, M.D., suggests that the "jock/frat culture" is the greatest detractor from women choosing an orthopedic surgical residency. Day observed that female orthopedic residents were more likely to choose a residency in general surgery because it would b...
