Smith Victoria, Bethune Cheri, Hurley Katrina F
a Dalhousie University , Halifax , Nova Scotia , Canada.
c Department of Family Medicine , Memorial University , St. John's , Newfoundland , Canada.
Teach Learn Med. 2018 Jan-Mar;30(1):33-44. doi: 10.1080/10401334.2017.1306447. Epub 2017 May 12.
Phenomenon: A growing number of women are entering the medical workforce, yet their distribution across medical specialties remains nonuniform. We sought to describe how culture, bias, and socialization shape gendered thinking regarding specialty choice at a Canadian undergraduate medical institution.
We analyzed transcripts from the Career Choices Project: 16 semistructured focus group discussions with 70 students graduating from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2008. The questions and prompts were designed to explore factors influencing specialty choice and did not specifically probe gender-based experiences. Focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed, and deidentified before analysis. Analysis was inductive and guided by principles of orientational qualitative inquiry using a gender-specific lens.
The pursuits of personal and professional goals, as well as contextual factors, were the major themes that influenced decision-making for women and men. Composition of these major themes varied between genders. Influence of a partner, consideration of familial commitments (both present and future), feeling a sense of connectedness with the field in question, and social accountability were described by women as important. Both genders hoped to pursue careers that would afford "flexibility" in order to balance work with their personal lives, though the construct of work-life balance differed between genders. Women did not explicitly identify gender bias or sexism as influencing factors, but their narratives suggest that these elements were at play. Insights: Our findings suggest that unlike men, women's decision-making is informed by tension between personal and professional goals, likely related to the context of gendered personal and societal expectations.
现象：越来越多的女性进入医疗行业，但她们在各医学专科中的分布仍不均衡。我们试图描述文化、偏见和社会化如何塑造加拿大一所本科医学院校中关于专科选择的性别化思维。
我们分析了职业选择项目的文字记录：对2003年、2006年、2007年和2008年从纽芬兰纪念大学毕业的70名学生进行的16次半结构化焦点小组讨论。问题和提示旨在探索影响专科选择的因素，并未专门探究基于性别的经历。焦点小组讨论进行了录音、转录，并在分析前进行了身份识别处理。分析采用归纳法，并以使用性别特定视角的定向定性探究原则为指导。
追求个人和职业目标以及背景因素是影响男性和女性决策的主要主题。这些主要主题的构成在性别之间存在差异。女性将伴侣的影响、对家庭责任（当前和未来）的考虑、对相关领域的归属感以及社会责任感描述为重要因素。尽管工作与生活平衡的概念在性别之间有所不同，但男女都希望从事能提供“灵活性”的职业，以便平衡工作和个人生活。女性没有明确将性别偏见或性别歧视视为影响因素，但她们的叙述表明这些因素在起作用。见解：我们的研究结果表明，与男性不同，女性的决策受到个人和职业目标之间紧张关系的影响，这可能与性别化的个人和社会期望背景有关。
