Research on women physicians with multiple roles: a feminist perspective

This paper describes a feminist empiricist approach to research and conceptual advances in the study of women professionals and applies it to research on women physicians with multiple roles. In past research, social values about appropriate roles for women led to an emphasis on negative outcomes, vagueness about which roles conflict, and the assumption that the work role is the most problematic for women. The effects of social context, including interpersonal relationships, has also been ignored. Research using new approaches has shown that there are benefits to combining roles, that role conflict is most common between work and parental roles, and that social support from the spouse is crucial. The importance of the work environment is also stressed.