- Title
- Patriarchy and resistance to change in rural general practice : Progress by female activists in revisioning a male institution
- Creator
- Schwarz, Imogen; McDonald, John
- Date
- 2004
- Type
- Text; Conference paper
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/66467
- Identifier
- vital:1562
- Abstract
- Females now outnumber males as medical graduates and general practice trainees in Australia. However, women are significantly less likely than men to take up full-time general practice in rural and remote areas. The organisation of medicine remains strongly patriarchal. Over the past decade, female doctors, educationalists, researchers and bureaucrats have been pushing for change. This empirical study investigates how women – at an institutional level – are challenging these entrenched interests and how change is resisted. Drawing upon data from in-depth interviews with seventeen women activists, the five main barriers are: the dominant cultural view that male, full-time, procedural doctors are the ‘norm’; the professional socialisation of doctors as amorphous, genderless persons; the occupation by men of, and the exclusion of women from, powerful positions in formal organisations; the threat to conform to professional standards; and the resource intensiveness of being an activist. These results indicate that, after ten years’ struggle, medicine has progressed beyond the denial of women’s issues. Female doctors are now seen as ‘the problem.’ Marginal adjustments are being made to accommodate their needs. Generally, however, women’s interests continue to be subordinated; exclusionary practices allow the men who control the organisation of rural general practice to maintain their privileges.; E1
- Publisher
- Beechworth, Australia : Katy Richmond
- Relation
- Paper presented at the The 2004 Annual TASA Conference, Beechworth, Australia : 7th-8th December, 2004
- Rights
- Copyright Unknown
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Rural; Activists
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