Women in general practice: responding to the sexual division of labour?

This paper provides an exploration of the gendered nature of the working experience of women within a high status and predominantly male dominated medical specialty, that of general practice or primary care physician. Women currently represent just over a third of all general practitioners in the U.K. and their numbers have been increasing. Women now account for 60% of new recruits into general practice. Despite this increase, consideration of the experience and role of women within medicine has largely focused on hospital medicine. The findings presented are derived from a three year project, that aimed to develop an understanding of the role women health workers play in the U.K. in the construction and provision of primary health care services for women. The methods employed consisted of a series of postal surveys and qualitative interviews conducted with GPs, female nurses and women service users. The first section of the discussion provides an exploration of the nature and impact of the sexual division of labour within general practice and the resulting occupational marginalisation of women GPs. Attention is given to identifying the key processes whereby the sexual division of labour is maintained and reproduced, particularly through the normative expectations of colleagues, patients and women GPs themselves. The final section presents a typology of the differing strategies the sampled women GPs adopted for managing their working roles in response to the existence of a sexual division of labour. The conclusion highlights the possible impact of the differing strategies upon the functioning of women within general practice and their relationship with women users of the service.