No doubt we can't blame female doctors from taking time off to focus on the family. Heck, I plan on taking time for for my family (go Paternity Leave!). Plus females are better candidates and do better in our current academic sessions. (I'm not against feminism, and in fact im a firm believer in female superiority lol). However, on a more abstract level in terms of addressing Canada's desperate need for more physicians, I think this might be a growing concern. Lets just throw some numbers around. I'm mostly generalizing these up but they sound about right.
Premise 1: Work(female) = 85% of Work(male)This no doubt will not be true all of the time, but in a 30 year career (Most graduate at 30-35, and retire 60-65), if a mother has a few maternity leaves, this she might take a few years off. Plus women are more likely to take additional time off to care for children. I think 85% is a fair number and only results in a 4.5 year loss total out of a career. Recall taking 1 day a week off would result in the loss of 20% of your operating capacity and most females work an abbreviated work week.
Premise 2: Physician acceptance rates is 65% female and 35% male.I'm not exactly sure what the number is now, but at many universities it is around or above this level. Plus this number will be increasing due to the simple fact more females are graduating from undergrad anyhow.
Calculations:
Work potential:
All Male Population: 1(1) + 0(0.85) = 1
All Female Population: 0(1) + 1(0.85) = 0.85
Even Populations: 0.5(1) + 0.5(0.85) = 0.925
65% Female 35% Male: 0.35(1) + 0.65(0.85) = .9025
Difference in work potential for even and 65% female populations:
0.925-0.9025 = 0.0225
Number of Graduates yearly: 2000 (2005 Number was 1897 graduates)
Amount of work lost: 2000 x 0.0225 = 45
So as the acceptance rate of females entering Medicine increases from 50% to 65%, we are losing the equivalent work potential of 45 doctors. And this happens EVERY year. 10% of Canadians don't have access to a family physician and we are in a desperate need for more doctors. Canada can't afford to train more doctors (we are already heavily subsidized). The question that must now be asked is whether or not we need affirmative action in our application process?
Here is the full article:
Zero-tolerance political correctness claims another Barbara Kay
National Post
After certain publicized remarks he made about women colleagues at a Toronto trade event a few weeks ago, legendary adman Neil French was forced to resign as worldwide creative director for WPP Group PLC, in which lofty role he oversaw industry giants such as Young and Rubicam.
What was so offensive that nothing short of resignation could save his company’s face? Did he say women were dumber than men? That they’re less ethical? That they smell bad?
No. The gist of his remarks was that few women reach the summit of the advertising profession because family obligations sap their competitive drive.
Clearly terrified of a feminist backlash, French’s boss explained the man’s instant pariah status as a result of views “not consistent with WPP’s philosophy.” But French remained unapologetic: “You can’t be a great creative director and have a baby and keep spending time off every time your kids are ill . . . . Everyone who doesn't commit themselves fully to the job is crap at it.”
Was French’s tone crude and insensitive? Yes. Were his comments a firing offence on their merits? No — except to feminists. And feminists rule.
French may have lost his job, but his refusal to recant at least salvaged his self-respect in a battle no (white, straight, capitalist) man can win today. His case stands in ironic contrast to similarly beleaguered Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who last January opined that women’s abilities in math and science did not, on average, match men’s.
Summers happened to be correct, but like French’s, his unscripted remarks ignited a firestorm. Unlike French, Summers grovelled and apologized in multiple spasms of emotionally correct contrition, because his professional life promised to be hell if he didn’t.
If French’s opinions were wildly absurd, one could understand women taking offence at them. But anyone in contact with 30-something female lawyers, doctors and, of course, advertising executives knows that he was only stating the obvious.
Mothers are torn between demanding careers and home in a way fathers are not, and that’s a fact. With motherhood, the once-consuming fires of career ambitions are banked, at least during early childhood.
Priorities shift, because making it to the top of one’s profession exacts an emotional toll that militant pioneering feminists may have been willing to pay, but not most of today’s mainstream educated women, confident both of their rights and their maternal instincts.
According to a recent front page story in the New York Times, 60 per cent of 138 Yale University women interviewed planned to cut back or stop work when they had children, and similar soundings at other elite schools confirm the trend. In Sweden, the oftcited Shangri-la of gender egalitarianism, women opt for 81 per cent of the 480 days of parental leave that is made jointly available for every couple to share.
However, the objective truth of French’s remarks is a secondary issue. An Oct. 22 Globe and Mail editorial entitled “Must Work Consume All?” demonstrates the liberal media's tendency to miss the real significance of such incidents, and instead to shovel fresh grist into the pernicious mill of Political Correctness.
Positioning French as a “sexist dinosaur,” the editorial held him up as the poster boy for a culture that rewards “the model of macho competitiveness.” But the work ethic of the advertising industry isn’t the story here. The story is that in a supposed democracy, French was compelled to resign for expressing an opinion in public — as it happens, a defensible and disinterested opinion, however boorishly expressed — to an audience that, thanks partly to misguided editorials like this, feels entitled to shoot messengers rather than debate the message.
Maybe French is a chauvinist and a social dinosaur, but so what? He did not utter hate speech. He voiced a sociological observation gleaned from his own experience — the notion that women are different from men — which unfortunately for him happens also to be a zero-tolerance PC Thought Crime.
Our business elites are fearful of the power feminists wield in society today. French’s superiors apparently believed that unless they sacrificed him, masses of women would suddenly stop buying hair-styling mousse marketed through an ad agency WPP oversees, a patently ridiculous outcome. But irrational scapegoating is always present when ideology runs amok.
This is the dining "room" because it's attached to the living. Don't do much actual dining here because I prefer to eat in front of the TV rather than the wall. One of the chairs is currently missing because it's being used in the study (my computer chair is still being shipped).
Why would someone paint their bedroom purple? Why? Why? Well, it left me with a difficult decorating task, that's for sure. My bed with its wrinkled sheets (I don't believe in ironing sheets). Yes, I still sleep with a stuffed animal. And my mirrored closet. I'm photographing this now because it's the most organized it will ever be. Large bra collection edited out for modesty purposes. This room smells like...passionfruit.
My bedroom lead directly into my washroom with its huge ass vanity mirror...not too conducive to self-esteem since one is usually naked in their bathroom.... And yes, that's my blush brush and obsessive eyeliner collection in the toothbrush holder. This room smells like...Lavender.
My solarium-turned-study complete with double monitors, surround speakers, a map of all the biological metabolic pathways, and a whiteboard with a motivation message.
Three words: COLOUR LASER PRINTER, muahaha. And a reminder for all my credit card bills (shudder). The next picture shows where my bookshelf should be..if it ever ships...and a fuzzy sheepskin rug to tickle my senses while I read mindnumbing papers. This room smells like...white tea.
The most unexciting part of my condo - the washer dryer. How I loathe it... And the foyer closet as organized as it will ever be...not really visible is 30 boxes of Royale tissue. And my foyer with the expandable and stackable shoe rack that I braved a forward Home Depot sales associate for...