Stereotypes aside about men going into surgery and women going into psychiatry (where do people get this stuff), by the absolute numbers more women have been progressively going into psychiatry over the last 30-40 years while male numbers have remained static. Why, quality of life, family friendly for both residency and life as an attending. See below from the article Women in U.S. Psychiatric Training in Academic Psychiatry Dec. '04:
In the 1970s, a woman in psychiatry training would often find herself alone among her peers. By the late 1980s, the number of women in psychiatry had grown by 913 (61%), compared with an increase of 229 (7%) among male residents. By 2003, 50.7% of U.S. psychiatric trainees were women. Furthermore, for a number of years prior to this period, women constituted nearly 50% of training populations.
For women who don't want to do the typical triad of "women's specialties," OBGYN for women that want to do surgery, or peds/family practice for those more cognitive or primary care oriented; radiology, psychiatry, and emergency medicine provide the ability to both have a career, and a personal/family life.
Women don't have the luxury of "trophy wives," to stay home and take care of the kids. And as one half of a two med student couple with a 9 month old, if my wife and I each wanted to orthopedic surgery, we would kill our marriage and doom our child to decades of therapy, but we can have our cake and eat it too doing emergency medicine and psychiatry respectively.
My 2 cents.
zen76
sorry.
