Improving Japanese Physicians’ Gender-Role Attitudes: Career Education and Adjusted Work Systems

Abstract

Background: Gender-role attribution is still prevalent in Japanese physicians' working environments. Indeed, 70% of female physicians forgo promising careers because of difficulties in raising children and balancing family life and a career. The proportion of male Japanese physicians taking paternity leave is only 2.6%, which is quite low. Female physicians with children are sometimes compelled to do most of the child-rearing, no matter how much they wish to continue their careers. This situation often leads female physicians to reduce their total work and research hours and to work as parttimers. This study investigated factors related to openness towards improving gender-role attitudes in academic hospitals. 1. With the Japanese population aging and the number of Japanese physicians per 1,000 population well below other developed countries' average, but patient visits being two times higher, Japan needs its female physicians to practice medicine.2. However, 70% of female physicians in Japan forgo promising careers because of difficulties in raising children and balancing family life and a career.3. Traditional gender-role attitudes that 'females stay home and males go out and work' still prevail in clinical medicine. Early career education on such topics as overcoming the obstacles of pregnancy and child-rearing to the practice of medicine, how others overcome those obstacles, might help female physicians design their life's career, prevent turnover among them and enable men to be more active in the household. What this paper adds:1. Female physicians with no children, whose spouses' were 'non-working', who agreed on providing career education on life events to young physicians, and who graduated within the last 1-10 years showed greater openness toward improving gender-role attitudes in academic hospitals.2. Male physicians who agreed with providing career education on life events to young physicians and who agreed with optimizing adequate work hours showed greater openness toward improving gender-role attitudes in academic hospitals.3. Of all factors, providing career education on life events to young physicians was considered most effective in improving gender-role attitudes in the clinical field. Optimizing working hours could also help improve gender-role attitudes and overall workplace diversity in medical settings.