Gender Stereotypes and Career Choice

Gender Stereotypes and Career Choice

By Hoi Kiu Wong

Image credit: piksel

Have you heard of this riddle before? A Father and Son are in a terrible car accident. The father dies at the scene and the boy is rushed to the hospital. The surgeon takes a look at the boy and says, “I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.” How can this be? 

Some would answer that the surgeon is the boy’s biological father and the father who died at the scene is the boy’s adoptive father; however, the correct answer is that the surgeon is the boy’s mother. 

If you took a while to get the correct answer or didn’t consider that the surgeon could be the boy’s mother, you are not alone. Growing up, we are exposed to gender biases - from the toys we play with to the specific gender stereotypes shown in the media. It’s not surprising how we have come to develop this implicit association between male and female. The subconscious stereotypes that are ingrained in our brain are hard to avoid. 

Research conducted by Jack Cao, a graduate student in Psychology at Harvard University, and his advisor, Mahzarin Banaji, a social psychologist at Harvard, used “Implicit-association tests” in order to observe gender bias. In the test, the participants are shown two words (e.g. ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘Doctor’) and were asked to press the button if the words are related. The results have shown that participants clicked the button faster if the word ‘doctor’ came up with the name ‘Jonathan’ and took longer if it came up with the name ‘Elizabeth’. After the task, the participants were explicitly told which person had which profession (e.g. Johnathan is the nurse and Elizabeth is the doctor). When asked to take the implicit association test again, they still subconsciously saw Johnathan as the doctor and Elizabeth as the nurse. This shows that in the face of the conscious mind, we can easily receive and process this information; but once we are in a time-limited situation, our subconsciousness will revert back to the stereotypical view. 

‘There seems to be stickiness in our implicit beliefs’ - Jack Cao 

Similar results were obtained when the researchers repeated the study but with different names and professions (e.g. ‘Richard’ and ‘Jennifer’ for the professions ‘Doctor’ and ‘Artist’). However, when the study was done with two male names ‘Matthew’ and ‘Benjamin’ and with the professions ‘Scientist’ and ‘Artist’, results revealed that the lack of gender stereotypes allows people to update their subconscious beliefs so their implicit thoughts match with their explicit responses. 

The gender stereotypes of medical professions are likely to have been derived from centuries of only allowing men to become doctors, as well as from traditional gender roles. For now, we can take this as our reason as to why people still ‘stick’ with these subconscious beliefs; but it is important that we change this, and here is why. 

An NHS study looked into the views of Primary School Children towards medical professions. They were shown images of both men and women and were asked to choose which one they thought was the surgeon. Results show that a shocking 72% of over 700 seven to eight year olds picked the man, and this figure increased to 80% among the girls. Moreover, seven out of ten children picked the woman when they were asked to point at the nurse. When questioned why they thought that the man is the surgeon and the woman the nurse, one girl answered: 

“Men are more focused, girls are all over the place; they might get distracted.” 

▴ Responses by the other children 

Source: Perceptions of health careers in primary schools (Health Education England and Kids Connections, 2016)

These misconceptions, as shocking as they are, show how deep-rooted gender stereotypes are in children. We must change this because what we grow up learning will eventually be placed in the bookshelf of ‘subconsciousness’ in the library of our mind. These gender biases we learn when we were children influence our career considerations and decisions we make later in life. This is not only the case for medical professions - where men are less likely to become nurses and females more inclined towards a nursing profession - it is also the case in a myriad of careers, such as becoming a police officer, a teacher, an engineer, or a scientist. People should not be discouraged from a profession merely because it is dominated by the opposite gender. Men and women are both just as competent as each other in any career.

So how do we overcome these gender biases in medicine? Well, we are already seeing massive change. The gender balance in medical schools has never been better; In the United States, new enrollment in medical school in 2016 was evenly divided between male (50.2%) and female (49.8%). In addition, the increase in the number of female physicians since 2012 is twice that of male physicians (11% and 5% respectively). In Hong Kong, the Department of Health reported an increasing proportion of female doctors. The overall sex ratio (males per 100 females) showed a decrease from 520 in 1982 to 225 in 2012. Of course, overcoming the stereotypical view will take more than just outnumbering the male doctors - it will take time. 

In order to encourage more teenagers to take on potential careers in nursing or medicine regardless of their gender or background, it is essential to have a diverse range of role models, and these role models are the healthcare workers themselves. For example, research has demonstrated that both girls and boys are equally interested in becoming a chef, and a strong possible influence on this is the mix of male and female chefs in the media, like in cooking shows that are broadcasted on television. We can then apply this to healthcare. If people encounter a diverse group of doctors and nurses from an early age, gender biases (as well as background biases) will gradually disappear. 

Another reason to extinguish these stereotypes are instances where the female physician is mistaken as the nurse by the patient. Jessa Fogel, a second year student at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said “what really bothers me about this scenario, is the incorrect assumptions made about a woman’s title in the hospital, it is the implicit notion that female physicians are working harder than their nursing counterparts to challenge gender stereotypes”. This illustrates that not only is the female-male stereotype between nurses and doctors a problem, but that we should also focus on diminishing the stereotype between female physicians and nurses. Each profession takes on its own challenges. 

Our perception drives reality. I hope that after reading this article, you have become more conscious of the importance of closing the huge gender gap in medical professions. The sooner we start taking action, the faster this problem can be solved. If done, we will be able to spare so many generations - do you really want your daughter to say that she doesn’t want to become a computer scientist simply because it is a male dominated field? Or your son telling you that he doesn’t want to become a nurse just because it is a ‘feminine role’ and risks being made fun of?

Thank you for reading. 

Sources: 

Aldrich, D. (n.d.). Men are doctors and women are nurses. Right? Of course not, but is this what primary school kids really think? [PDF]. England: NHS Health Education England. Available at <https://www.hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/documents/Men%20are%20doctors%20and%20women%20are%20nurses%20blog_0.pdf; [Accessed 2 October 2020].

Pappas, Stephanie. “Male Doctors, Female Nurses: Subconscious Stereotypes Hard to Budge.” LiveScience, Purch, 20 June 2016, Available at <https://www.livescience.com/55134-subconscious-stereotypes-hard-to-budge.html; [Accessed 2 October 2020].

Cao, Jack, and Mahzarin R. Banaji. “The Base Rate Principle and the Fairness Principle in Social Judgment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 113, no. 27, 2016, pp. 7475–7480., doi:10.1073/pnas.1524268113. Available at <https://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/7475 ; [Accessed 3 October 2020].

Ulrich, Beth. “Gender Diversity and Nurse-Physician Relationships.” Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association, American Medical Association, 1 Jan. 2010, Available at <https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/gender-diversity-and-nurse-physician-relationships/2010-01; [Accessed 2 October 2020].

Karen Tran-Harding, MD. “Oh, Are You a Nurse? The Physician Gender Bias.” KevinMD.com, KevinMD.com, 15 July 2020, Available at <https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2018/04/oh-are-you-a-nurse-the-physician-gender-bias.html; [Accessed 2 October 2020].

Fogel, Jessa. “Unpacking the ‘Insult’ of Being Called a Nurse as a Female Physician.” In Training , In Training , 19 Mar. 2020, Available at <https://in-training.org/unpacking-the-insult-of-being-called-a-nurse-as-a-female-physician-19041; [Accessed 2 October 2020].

“Statistics.” Department of Health - Health Manpower Survey, 2006, www.dh.gov.hk/english/statistics/statistics_hms/sumdr12.html. Available at <https://www.dh.gov.hk/english/statistics/statistics_hms/sumdr12.html ; [Accessed 2 October 2020].