Geelong’s biggest employer has highlighted the dominance of women in its workforce to mark International Women’s Day.
Females now covered three quarters of Barwon Health’s 7000-plus staff, the organisation said this week as Geelong prepared for women’s day 2019 today under the theme Balance for Better.
Barwon Health “always” hired the best candidate for each job, said nephrology Associate Professor Christine Somerville, who supervises training of Geelong hospital medical officers.
“In nearly all medical schools there are more women than male students now,” she said. “That’s been the case for many years, and Geelong certainly has had significantly more over the past decade or so.
“Despite the fact that women comprise over 50 per cent of medical students and young doctors, there’s still relatively few women in the more senior medical positions of the industry, but I think that will change for sure.
Women were “still under-represented” in some Geelong medical fields, such as urology and orthopaedic surgery, Assoc Prof Somerville said.
“But even there Geelong is faring well, with Kathryn McLeod one of our respected urologists.”
All three of Barwon Health’s new orthopaedic registrars hired in the latter half of last year were women, Assoc Prof Somerville also noted.
She had never experienced gender discrimination during her career but believed that women still faced hurdles in some medical fields.
They were also sometimes overlooked for promotions due to the time spent raising a family, she said.
“I think we need to put more effort into allowing women to combine family and career,” she said.
“If you look at how female-dominated the nursing staff has been there is an overproportion of men in higher positions, which I think is because they’ve been able to advance their careers without taking breaks for families.
But Barwon Health had “done well” employing women in senior positions, Assoc Prof Somerville said .
“If we can make it easier the natural balance is that there would be more women.”
Stereotypes had “well and truly moved away from the tradition of men as doctors and women as nurses”, Assoc Prof Somerville said.
“Early in my career, people would assume you were the nurse but that’s all changed now. “That’s a really old-fashioned view because there are so many more women doctors and male nurses.”
