Women - The missing link in dentistry?
By Claudia Salwiczek, DTI (Guest commentary)
I just returned from the Greater New York Dental Meeting where I had the opportunity to conduct a number of interviews with well-known opinion leaders in dentistry.What struck me most about the line-up was that only 1 out of the 30 professionals that I spoke to was a woman.
It is a sad fact that compared to other fields in medicine dentistry is still predominantly a male profession. There are exceptions, of course, such as Dr Catrise Austin, a New York-based dentist, who I recently met to talk about her decision to offer free HIV tests to her patients. Or Dr Bo Chen from Beijing, who I met at the P-I Brånemark symposium in Sweden where she presented a revealing study on patient satisfaction figures with facial and orofacial reconstruction. Unfortunately, though large in impact, these developments and ideas do not usually receive the recognition they deserve.
However, what these examples also demonstrate is that women often tend to develop solutions that are socially applicable and that offer benefits for all members of society; a fact endorsed by a recent World Health Organisation report. In the study on Women and Health, the question was also raised why women generally have to carry much of the health care burden while getting hardly anything back. It may be time for women, especially those working in medical and dental professions, to step up and make their message heard.
It may not happen overnight, but with more and more women overtaking high political and economical positions, it will be difficult for dentistry to hold up to its Boys Club status for much longer. I certainly hope that when I return to New York in 2010, there will be a larger share of female dentists to speak to.
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In the UK at least the number of female graduates in dentistry has out-numbered male graduates for some time. In terms of new graduates there is certainly no longer a problem with the gender balance. The problem with the well-known opinion leaders is partly that they are further through their career, therefore many of them graduated at a time when more men were graduating than women. What is more of a long term problem is that in order to be a well-known opinion leader in dentistry you need to devote an enormous number of hours to a combination of higher training, attending and lecturing at courses all over the world, usually in addition to running a practice. This is pretty much imcompatible with the home life of many women who want to be able to have children who are raised with lots of parental input. Until society changes so that fathers feel both more willing, and able to take a part in flexible and part time working, and spend more time in the home, most women will sacrifice career glory for the emotional needs of their children.
We need changes in all professions and industries so that men who want to can take on more childcare responsibilities, and allow their female partners to be leaders in their professions, where they want to be, without being forced to put their children into long hours of childcare.