Re: “Just a housewife”
In addition to my mother having a medical background, my husband is a physician and we have quite a few friends who are physicians in various specialties (including many who are women). I’m not sure how many people you know in real life who are physicians and in what specialty…but trust me when I say your views above are very wrong. Its easy for us to write that doctors are allowed to take breaks, they can keep up with certifications etc. but in reality, it’s really that that simple.
In the U.S., most people who become M.D. usually have loans more than $100K. How many men make enough money where they can pay off a loan like this while their wife stays at home? Certifications, licenses etc. also cost money…literally thousands of dollars. How many husbands have the money to pay for this so that the non-working wife can continue to keep up with her continuing education/certifications? With doctors who work at hospitals, often the hospital helps with with these costs. Look at the amount of time people have to spend during medical school and residency to learn it all. Even if a woman takes a few years off…and lets say tried to get back to her career when kids start kindergarden…who’s going to watch the kids when they are home? How is the woman going to find time to spend re-taking classes/getting certifications etc? It’s not like she can just do it all while the kids are at school and spend every evening/weekend catering to her family. Most doctors do not have a set schedule…definitely not the ones that work in a hospital. I know several doctors that are in private practice and they must still make themselves available for after hour emergencies. So even when a woman goes back…it’s nearly impossible to others to expect that she will have a job where she never has to work in the evenings or weekends and will have a set schedule.
Loss of skill is a MAJOR problem for any doctor who takes a long time off from work. For specialized doctors, like anesthesiologist, surgeons, OB/GYN etc…not performing those procedures for years makes it VERY difficult (if not impossible depending not the amount of time they took off) for them to go back. We have several doctors on GS and I’m sure even they will agree with this. And think about this as a patient…would you choose a OB who just started practicing after taking a break for 3 years OR the OB who has been practicing continuously since med school? Do you want the anesthesiologist who has done thousands of epidurals in the last few years OR the one who just came back to work after a long break? In many specialties that require doctors to perform procedures, practicing and doing those procedures over and over again makes a BIG difference.
Yes there are “options” and yes, there are rare positions out there that have flexible hours and what not. But that is not the majority. In big cities where there is not a lack of doctors, having a gap of few years can hurt someone’s career big time and make it almost impossible to get back in. Its one thing to take a maternity leave for a few months or take a leave of absence due to a emergency…but it is not easy for a woman physician to simply stop working for a few years and get back into the field.
If a woman doctor chooses to take a break from her career then that’s her choice. But for outsiders who are not doctors and/or are not familiar with the demands of the profession to expect a woman to do this and think that it’ll be “easy” for her to re-start after a few years is not realistic.