IWD: Time to get thinking and debating!

It’s International Women’s Day  and I would like to share some of my thoughts and inspire you to think hard about your ideal working-week.

First the historical perspective. As a seventies Feminist the urgent issues were about getting the same job as men and just as importantly we wanted to get the same pay. This seemed very achievable as a medical graduate, apart from the fact that you knew that as a woman it was almost impossible to become a surgeon, and there was the inevitable decision, and dilemma about whether and when you should have children.

Now my ideas as a senior and long-served GP have moved on. Firstly we need to be more inclusive in so many ways as we are such a diverse profession. Secondly being involved in teaching Glasgow University medical students I know that we now have far more women compared with men training to be doctors.

This means that some of the most important factors for our new doctors are flexible training and flexible working hours. The BMA really needs to start campaigning and pushing for workplace nurseries but we also need to be more flexible about colleagues who have other caring responsibilities and those who have disabilities.

I would really like to inspire others to open up the debate about what is full-time? In the twenty-first century should we not be pushing employees to have a more balanced life?  Allowing for more family and leisure time, and being able to do a variety of other things within medicine. If we freed ourselves from the British approach to work that insists on ‘the jacket on the back of the seat’, nine-to-five, five days per week, we might all have better well-being, be less exhausted and perhaps better women and better doctors for those for whom we care.

We need to think about what sort of futures we want for our medical graduates. There are so many pressures on all of us nowadays that if we give them some thought their futures could look and be a lot brighter. Time to get thinking and debating.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Mary Anne L. Burrow, FRCGP, Academic & Out-of-Hours GP, Glasgow.

@maryanne_BMA