Women in the health professions

There is a very great diversity at international level with regard to the percentage of women in each of the three professions considered. As time goes on, however, this diversity appears to be slowly diminishing, partly as a result of an overall rise in the rates. Apart from a few cases, of which the most striking is that of physicians in the USSR, the proportion of women in the health professions increased, sometimes considerably, during the 1960s. In most cases, this growth was dependent on the following processes: --after the age of 50, the number of women at times declined less quickly than that of men, perhaps as a result of excess male mortality, --after the age of 35 and up to the age 50, the number of women in some cases declined less quickly than that of men, in particular as a result of a return to the profession by mothers once their children had grown up, --under the age of 35, the number of women in almost all cases increased much more rapidly than the number of men. The first two of these three processes were only of secondary importance, and in some cases, indeed, of no importance. The third was the one with the most pronounced effect on overall growth in the degree to which women were represented in the three professions considered by the study. This degree did not seem at any given time, to be linked to the proportion of members of the profession in the population (as expressed by the ratio of members of the profession to the population) nor to the proportion of women in gainful occupation (expressed as the female activity rate) nor to the national level of economic development (expressed as the national per capita income). It did, on the other hand, appear to be directly affected by each country's own policy decisions and academic traditions.