What is your gender?

Veterinary Science Graduate Programs from U. of I.
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What is your gender?

  • Male

    Votes: 18 21.2%

  • Female

    Votes: 67 78.8%
  • Total voters
    85
You should prob add some more options for people that don't fit into those boxes 🙂
 
Also:

Cisgender Female
Cisgender Male
Trigender
Genderless/Agender
Genderfluid
Bigender
Pangender.
Transgender (MtF = Male-to-Female, FtM = Female-to-Male)
Androgyny/Neutrois

Add these options or I refuse to answer on the basis of bigotry.
 
I love how the OP has made other polls today, consisting of "why med" "why dent" "why pharm" but all we get is "what is your gender?" 🙄:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

Dude, why polls?
 
sunshinevet said:
I love how the OP has made other polls today, consisting of "why med" "why dent" "why pharm" but all we get is "what is your gender?" 🙄:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

Dude, why polls?
Click to expand...

👍 :laugh:
 
Interesting..... There are more male pre-vets than I thought.
 
sunshinevet said:
I love how the OP has made other polls today, consisting of "why med" "why dent" "why pharm" but all we get is "what is your gender?" 🙄:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:
Click to expand...
Ha that's because I thought only one of those possible responses would apply to you prevets: namely aptitude. So I figured making "why vet?" poll would be pointless.
 
DoeAdeer said:
Ha that's because I thought only one of those possible responses would apply to you prevets: namely aptitude. So I figured making "why vet?" poll would be pointless.
Click to expand...

No more pointless than any of the other questions. Using your definition of aptitude ("I can't imagine doing anything else"- side note I would define aptitude as skill and maybe call this "calling"), it appears you think the only reason a person would ever get into this profession is because it's our calling or something. Obviously, most of us probably feel somewhat of a calling to the profession and I can't imagine anyone is getting into it for the money, but there are a lot of other reasons to get into veterinary medicine. For example, there are lots of interesting public health and research applications that don't necessarily fall under what I think you naively assume is the "i love animals and want to spend my life helping them" calling.
Also, on the other "Why insert-medical-field-here" threads you listed prestige? Do you think there is no prestige in being a veterinarian or that that couldn't possibly be a reason? I find that somewhat insulting.
 
Foxhunter said:
tl;dr
Click to expand...

duty_calls.png
 
DoeAdeer said:
Interesting..... There are more male pre-vets than I thought.
Click to expand...


It's ~ 20/80 split give or take a few percentage points from prevets to vet students. This poll has both a small sample size and self-selection (SDN Community) as confounding factors too.

FWIW
 
Bismarck said:
It's ~ 20/80 split give or take a few percentage points from prevets to vet students. This poll has both a small sample size and self-selection (SDN Community) as confounding factors too.

FWIW
Click to expand...
So the field of veterinary is like that of nursing...I see.
 
WhtsThFrequency said:
Nursing has always been heavily female. Veterinary school has only semi-recently taken that turn. If you look back 15 or 20 years, the classes are predominantly male. Even to the >90% point in some areas.
Click to expand...
Why might that be? Do you know?
 
DoeAdeer said:
Why might that be? Do you know?
Click to expand...

That's been a discussion point before...I don't think anyone really knows the answer; it's multifactorial.

Part of it probably began simply with the rise of women in higher education in general (more women in college now than ever, even more than men), and the other part may possibly have been due to the fact that, as more women entered, the same type of prejudice began about seeing it as a "female dominated" profession so fewer men entered.

Additionally, there was the ever-increasing rise of companion animal medicine over large/food animal medicine which, in *general* women tend to be more drawn towards (with the exception of equine medicine, which is also heavily female now). Not to say there are not women interested in production medicine, and I know some FANTASTIC female cattle and sheep/goat/pig vets, but overall it is still male (let's just say a lot of the old-timer employers are reluctant to hire female food animal vets due to prejudice).
 
WhtsThFrequency said:
That's been a discussion point before...I don't think anyone really knows the answer; it's multifactorial.

Part of it probably began simply with the rise of women in higher education in general (more women in college now than ever, even more than men), and the other part may possibly have been due to the fact that, as more women entered, the same type of prejudice began about seeing it as a "female dominated" profession so fewer men entered.

Additionally, there was the ever-increasing rise of companion animal medicine over large/food animal medicine which, in *general* women tend to be more drawn towards (with the exception of equine medicine, which is also heavily female now). Not to say there are not women interested in production medicine, and I know some FANTASTIC female cattle and sheep/goat/pig vets, but overall it is still male (let's just say a lot of the old-timer employers are reluctant to hire female food animal vets due to prejudice).
Click to expand...
And do you know why THAT is? Is it just women's "thing?" Anyway, I appreciate your analysis, very thought-provoking indeed.
 
DoeAdeer said:
And do you know why THAT is? Is it just women's "thing?" Anyway, I appreciate your analysis, very thought-provoking indeed.
Click to expand...

It's not seen as "manly" to care about dogs and cats. It's much more "manly" to work with cattle/horses/what have you. Gender stereotypes affect everyone. So half of it was women likely being intimidated to enter the large animal world (although that is changing).

In addition, food animal medicine is a lot about production. You cannot become attached to the animal. You have to be ready to send to slaughter a perfectly healthy animal because hey, it's not making enough milk/gaining weight/getting pregnant often enough. If an animal is sick, well, many producers don't want to fix it, even if it's treatable, if it is affects profit too much. Or they only want the cheap fix, which may or may not work. It's brutal, and you can't get too attached. Women (again, on the whole....don't want to make people mad here) tend to be more nurturing. We enjoy healing. In companion animal medicine, there is a lot more bonding between client and veterinarian. Obviously, all the difficult, disgusting, and physically hard part of medicine are still there as well, but there need to be a much different level of communication. We aren't talking about a simple production animal anymore. We're talking about a horse, a dog, a cat, whatever, that some people value as a family member, sometimes even a substitute child.

I think women tend to be much better at communication and empathy, which are cornerstones of successful companion animal medicine in *addition* to all of the medical know-how. That is likely the other half of the draw.
 
I hope I'll be a "fantastic" food animal vet sometime, too.

I really hope the prejudice against women will be less though when I start working. It'd suck to have to change to equine/small animal etc. just because of something like that.

I do get attached to animals, but only when I'm able to spend a good amount of time on loving on them etc. My friend gets upset just talking about production animals (she's a vegan because she thinks it's wrong to eat other animals), but I don't really have a problem with it. I think it's a part of life and deal with it. I don't think we'd be able to completely change everything and make the whole society vegan. So what I prefer is kind of an approach like Temple Grandin. Not stopping the industry, but trying to make it better/easier on the animals.
 
PetPony said:
I hope I'll be a "fantastic" food animal vet sometime, too.

I really hope the prejudice against women will be less though when I start working. It'd suck to have to change to equine/small animal etc. just because of something like that.

I do get attached to animals, but only when I'm able to spend a good amount of time on loving on them etc. My friend gets upset just talking about production animals (she's a vegan because she thinks it's wrong to eat other animals), but I don't really have a problem with it. I think it's a part of life and deal with it. I don't think we'd be able to completely change everything and make the whole society vegan. So what I prefer is kind of an approach like Temple Grandin. Not stopping the industry, but trying to make it better/easier on the animals.
Click to expand...

I think it's getting better as younger people continue to enter the industry. I definitely agree with you on the latter. I seriously flirted with the idea of being a feedlot vet, or even dairy, for the same reason.
 
I always wanted to be an equine vet, but after showing horses myself.. I don't think I could deal with only horse people my whole career. I hope I don't offend someone with this. Not everybody is like that. There are definitely people I like in that industry! :laugh:

Once I started with my animal science classes, I really liked working with the cattle and pigs. And even the sheep. I always liked the animals themselves, just never thought about working with them. Absolutely love what I'm learning now and am so excited about the Food Animal Infectious Disease class I'm taking next semester!

😍
 
Dsmoody23 said:
Also:

Cisgender Female
Cisgender Male
Trigender
Genderless/Agender
Genderfluid
Bigender
Pangender.
Transgender (MtF = Male-to-Female, FtM = Female-to-Male)
Androgyny/Neutrois

Add these options or I refuse to answer on the basis of bigotry.
Click to expand...

I don't answer any polls that aren't translated into the nation-neutral language of Esperanto.
 
PetPony said:
I always wanted to be an equine vet, but after showing horses myself.. I don't think I could deal with only horse people my whole career. I hope I don't offend someone with this. Not everybody is like that. There are definitely people I like in that industry! :laugh:
Click to expand...

Don't worry. We all know we're crazy. 😉 There's crazy people in every industry, but I can't say I'm all that excited about dealing with horse people as a vet. They can be special....:laugh:
 
WhtsThFrequency said:
Women (again, on the whole....don't want to make people mad here) tend to be more nurturing. We enjoy healing.
Click to expand...

lol @ the irony of a female pathologist-in-training saying this.

Interestingly, I find that in my Medicine courses, I am much less interested in the 'healing' aspect and moreso in the process of diagnosis and understanding the etiology and pathogenesis of disease. Uh....oh......
 
nyanko said:
lol @ the irony of a female pathologist-in-training saying this.

Interestingly, I find that in my Medicine courses, I am much less interested in the 'healing' aspect and moreso in the process of diagnosis and understanding the etiology and pathogenesis of disease. Uh....oh......
Click to expand...

I said "on the whole" 😉

I'm also much more interested in the disease process. Obviously, I would like everything to be healed....but I find the Dx more interesting than the Tx.

On boards, I would get tremendously pissed when they would present a complaint, and I could diagnose it right off the bat and tell you everything you wanted to know about the pathogenesis, both gross and microscopic.....but no, they wanted to know what antibiotic to use. Argh.
 
WhtsThFrequency said:
On boards, I would get tremendously pissed when they would present a complaint, and I could diagnose it right off the bat and tell you everything you wanted to know about the pathogenesis, both gross and microscopic.....but no, they wanted to know what antibiotic to use. Argh.
Click to expand...

:laugh: I completely understand. Same on my Med tests so far. I'm like I KNOW WHAT THIS ANIMAL HAS and the question is like "how would you treat this" and I'm like ummm supportive care and find someone who gives a damn about treating it. :meanie:
 
WhtsThFrequency said:
I'm also much more interested in the disease process. Obviously, I would like everything to be healed....but I find the Dx more interesting than the Tx.
Click to expand...

nyanko said:
:laugh: I completely understand. Same on my Med tests so far. I'm like I KNOW WHAT THIS ANIMAL HAS and the question is like "how would you treat this" and I'm like ummm supportive care and find someone who gives a damn about treating it. :meanie:
Click to expand...

Preaching to the choir here! 😀
 
Bismarck said:
It's ~ 20/80 split give or take a few percentage points from prevets to vet students. This poll has both a small sample size and self-selection (SDN Community) as confounding factors too.

FWIW
Click to expand...

dead on.....at least thus far 👍
23mohw6.jpg
 
nyanko said:
:laugh: I completely understand. Same on my Med tests so far. I'm like I KNOW WHAT THIS ANIMAL HAS and the question is like "how would you treat this" and I'm like ummm supportive care and find someone who gives a damn about treating it. :meanie:
Click to expand...

you're nicer than me. my answer would be call state vet/cdc if reportable and have them deal with it. If not, send to slaughter or render.
 
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