Male(volent) medicine: tensions and contradictions in the gendered re/construction of the medical profession in South Africa

Abstract

This paper reports on findings from a recent study, which investigated the reasons underlying, possible gendered attrition trends in the South African medical profession. The study included an analysis of national quantitative medical school and professional data over a ten-year period, as well as qualitative interviews with a sample of 27 women medical doctors that graduated from the same, Cape Town-based medical school. While the overall study focused on attrition, this paper focuses more on what the qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts reveal about the construction of gender in the medical profession. Many are of the opinion that male-dominated professions, such as medicine, are gendered male, but exactly how these mechanisms of gendering are maintained or reproduced is not always made explicit. Conceptually and analytically informed by a feminist-organisational approach, this paper hopes to contribute by showing how a specific group of women doctors negotiate and respond to complex and contradicting professional discourses around medicine and being a woman doctor. The findings illustrate respondents, as active agents involved in perpetuating, resisting and changing the constructions of gender in the profession. The analysis asserts that these women are trying to reflect on the masculinities contained within their professional discourses, and they are actively involved in the construction and development of new femininities. The findings raise hope for future more positive discourses about women in the medical profession.