Kind of a big deal...

Remember this? I was reminded of the whole "Math class is tough" Barbie debacle when I saw this piece by the New York Times' science columnist today, which revisits the hoopla over women in science spurred by comments from then-president of Harvard, Larry Summers.

I won't pretend to understand all of the obstacles and hardships endured by women who have fought their way to the top of academic math and science, but as a woman in surgery - and a female plastic surgeon, nonetheless - I can sympathize.

Let's face it, medicine used to be a boys' club. Growing up, my pediatrician was a lovely older man, and when the time came to choose a gynecologist, there were only men to choose from in my hometown.

But again, medicine used to be a boys' club. Now over half of all medical students are women, and the majority of pediatricians and OB/GYNs practicing today are women. In my surgical intern class at Stanford, six out of twenty-three of us were female, which was fairly impressive to me at that time.

The specialty of surgery, however, remains male-dominated. Why? Is it because men are better surgeons? I would have to disagree with that. Men tend to have bigger egos and greater hunger for power? As much as some may want to believe women are the fairer sex, no to that thought too.

Want to hear my personal theory (and that's all I claim for it - pure opinion, based only on my own experience and reality, no studies, no evidence to back it up)?

Surgery is tough. Any stubborn human being can put his or her head down, put the blinders on, and the nose to the grindstone for five, six, seven (or more) grueling years of residency. But women, as tough as we need to and can be, have an additional biological burden to bear; like it or not, our prime years are spent in surgical scrubs, sleeping in questionably clean beds in dingy call rooms, running around the hospital ward trying to answer to a dozen different bosses, staying on our clog-clad feet for marathon operations. A lot of women (and frankly, men, too) decide that this isn't worth it or that this life (temporary as it may be, if you can optimistically call five years temporary) isn't fair to their families.

I never thought about those harsh social and reproductive realities as a medical student trying to decide what kind of doctor to become. I liked surgery; I loved plastic surgery; and that was that. Maybe my naivete helped me endure. Being on the far side of those years, I can look back without regrets now.

Those years are exactly what make me unique; there aren't that many female plastic surgeons out there (kudos to Stanford for being at the forefront of training women in plastic surgery; perhaps a subject to explore in another post sometime).

And that is what makes my work relationship with Dr. Weintraub so special. Where else in the Peninsula/South Bay/San Jose area can you find a team of female plastic surgeons working together? That's right: Duet Plastic Surgery. We're kind of a big deal.