Female surgeons seek equality in male-dominated field.

In the world of medicine, surgeons are the highly trained elite. Feared as much as revered, they occupy a male stronghold in the traditionally masculine medical field. What, then, if the surgeon is a woman?

Joan Cassell, a research associate in the Anthropology Department in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis (Mo.), gained entree into the closely guarded world of surgeons to examine how women fulfill their dreams and practice their profession in a calling where 95% of their colleagues are men. She found being a woman does not guarantee a traditionally feminine approach to patient care. Some female surgeons she observed were nurturing and loving, while others were cold and brusque, even hurtful.

Moreover, female surgeons are treated differently than their male counterparts on virtually every level by superiors, colleagues, nurses, and patients. In fact, women surgeons face a sort of daily Catch-22. They are expected to act "womanly"--maternal and loving. When they don't, they are punished by their co-workers, Cassell points out. On the other hand, if women surgeons behave in a conventionally feminine way, sustaining leadership roles becomes difficult, and they also seem to invite sexual aggression. "Surgeons who are men are seen as surgeons, period. Surgeons who are women are seen as women first, then surgeons. Being treated as professional equals is a daily struggle for many."

The examples of mistreatment are numerous and varied, but the underlying tone is the same: disrespect, tinged by fear of the female. On the far end of the spectrum, Cassell tells of a male senior surgeon who so hated having a woman assist him that when a female junior surgeon was assigned to the task, he would stand outside the operating room and scream: "Anybody but the girl. Give me a trained monkey--I'd rather have anybody but the girl."

On a personal side, surgical residency can be more difficult for women than for men. Hospitals are teeming with single women eager to date and marry a surgeon. Female trainees searching for a social life do not find such overt enthusiasm for their career choice. The women Cassell interviewed felt that many male physicians would rather have a more traditional wife who would have time to run a house and raise their family, given the enormous time demands upon surgeons. Men outside of medicine had a difficult time understanding the time demands the profession exacted as well, the women said. The result, Cassell...