International Women’s Day: Vodcast launched to boost numbers of female surgeons

The vodcast, which provides a range of accessible and inspiration role models, both male and female, through hospital footage and short interviews with surgeons is part of a project led by University of Exeter psychologists Professor Michelle Ryan and Dr Kim Peters in collaboration with the Royal College of Surgeons, Scalpel (the UK’s largest undergraduate surgical society) and the Medical Women’s Federation. The project aims to increase the number of women working as surgeons by challenging the perception that surgeons are, or need to be, a particular type of person.

Research by Peters and Ryan has shown that concerns about identity fit can reduce the motivation of women to pursue traditionally male occupations, such as surgery. The project will introduce initiatives to increase the visibility of female surgical role models and will provide both male and female role models who will demonstrate that surgeons need not fit a standard stereotype. The vodcast and other initiatives will directly challenge the perceptions of female medical students and surgical trainees to the fit between their gender identity and the surgical identity.

The current and potential future shortages of surgeons in the UK are areas of growing concern and increasing the attractiveness of a surgical career to female students will help to address this problem.

This work is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.