De los Equipos que requieren instalación y puesta en funcionamiento

An examination of the formation of the South African Society of Medical Women (SASMW) presents the most comprehensive account of women’s entry into the South African medical profession. The SASMW was established in 1952. The formation of this body not only illustrated the racialised character46 of medical professionalisation in South Africa, but also the fact that gender discrimination and inequality within the profession were experienced to such an extent that women doctors felt it necessary to mobilise and organise as a group.

The first women doctors to graduate in South Africa did so in the 1920s (Wits archives), which was also the time during which the first group representing medical women in SA was formed. After the outbreak of the war in the late 1930s, this group broke up. Dr Alice Cox started the Johannesburg branch of the reformed SASMW in 1952, while Dr Ethel Barrow re-formed the Cape Town branch. These first pioneers described the medical profession in South Africa as “a profession that was closing doors and we had to do something about it” (Walker, 1997a: 1505). When the SASMW was re-established in the 1950s, “it was in response to discrimination and so we began to lobby for change” (Walker, 1997a: 1506). Some of the restrictions and barriers to the advancement of women medical doctors in the profession were:

• The retirement age of women doctors, which was 53 in comparison to male doctors’ 60 years;

• The marriage bar, in terms of which some women were either dismissed when they got married, or were refused employment based on their marital status;

• The fact that only temporary positions were available to married women doctors, which were challenged by the association, and thus married women doctors have been employed in a permanent capacity in the public sector since 1955;

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This refers to the continued discrimination against people of colour in terms of entering the medical profession, although white women were increasingly gaining access to the profession.

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• Unequal salaries and conditions of service, against which the SASMW “waged successful campaigns for equal salaries and improved conditions of service for medical women in part-time employment” (Walker, 1997a: 1506);

• The issue of specialisation through part-time study, which was the organisation’s major focus during the 1960s and 1970s, in an effort to meet the “needs of women with young families who were not specializing because of the difficulties involved in raising a family and studying full-time” (Walker, 1997a: 1506). The main tenets of resistance against part-time specialisation, remains concern by the medical fraternity that standards would be compromised if this occurs, and thus “this issue remains one of contention and is currently not offered by all specialties” (Walker, 1997a: 1506), even today.

What Walker importantly notes in her article on the formation of the SASMW is the need for “further research on the medical profession’s attitude to gender and racial issues” (1997a: 1507). Through critically evaluating the gendered outcomes in the profession, and analysing the possibility of a gendered organisational culture in South African medicine, it might be possible to illustrate these discriminatory tendencies. Considering the series of issues this organisation lobbied for, and for which it managed to achieve some kind of gender parity in certain instances, even a decade later, some of these issues are remain a problem for women doctors in the South African medical profession.

As I have mentioned before, in-depth discussion and critical analysis of women in the SA medical profession is not very extensive. However, some studies have been valuable. Levinson and Lurie (2004) evaluate the effects that increasing feminisation will have on the SA profession, falling in line with the essentialist conceptions of women’s increasing entry into a male-dominated profession. The core question in their study is, will women’s entry change the nature of the medical profession? Some authors have included a consideration of the influence of race on medical professionalisation and training (Breier & Wildschut, 2006). Unterhalter (1985) looked at discrimination against female medical students, but this aspect has not been followed up very extensively by any other study to date, or carried through to an investigation of experiences in the profession.

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Walker (2003, 2005) and Wynchank (nd) present probably the most extensive consideration of the influence of race, gender and culture, and how they impact on medical professionalisation in South Africa. They also refer to the possible disjuncture between a westernised work culture and the beliefs and traditions adhered to by female doctors from non-western cultures (Vidyasagar & Rea, 2004; Wynchank, nd; Pausawasdi, 2004). The remaining reports have tried to establish at least a quantitative account of medical education and the profession in SA (Brink et al, 1991; Hay & Jama, 2004; Breier & Wildschut, 2006; Breier, 2009), elaborating less extensively on the qualitative issues.

Deficiencies in research on this broad subject area thus are noted as a lack of focus on: women in the SA medical profession specifically47, how feminisation of the profession will affect patient care and health care systems (Brink, 1991), the profession itself (Levinson & Lurie, 2004), and the issue of race (Wynchank, nd; Reay, 1998). Even less has been written on how SA women doctors themselves affect and are affected by the organisational culture of medicine. This study therefore would make a valuable contribution to the field by aiming to create a deeper understanding of the possible gendered substructure underlying the experiences of women doctors in SA, which could shed some light on attrition.

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In addition to the studies already mentioned, the author found only two studies related to SA women doctors in the NRF Nexus database on current and completed research projects in South Africa (Walker, 1999 and Vries, current).

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