Roundtable Meeting Report by Dr Jan Coles for AFMW

On Monday 26th October, approximately 25 women and 4 men representing business, government and NGOs met in Melbourne for a stakeholder roundtable discussion facilitated by Liz Forsyth of KPMG on equal opportunity for women in the workplace. Issues discussed included the current status of women in the workplace, key barriers to equal opportunity, what works to achieve equal opportunity, the role of the EOWW Act and the implications for change. The Australian Federation for Medical Women has contributed to this debate through the Australian Women’s Council submission.

Women in Australia have a lower overall workforce participation rate and lower participation rates for mothers with young children when compared to other similar OECD countries. Australian women have the 5th largest gender pay gap of 17.5% (May 2009) in the OECD. Australian women are less likely to hold leadership positions, and dominate the lower paid industries and occupations. Australian full time employees have the longest working hours in the OECD with 16% women and nearly 33% of men working over 50 hours per week.

Does doctor gender influence the likelihood of medicolegal complaints? An Australian study published in this month's MJA found that male doctors are 1.56 times more likely to be currently involved in a medicolegal matter:

"Our logistic regression analysis showed that there does appear to be a difference between male and female doctors, even after adjusting for other factors, with males being 1.56 (95% CI, 1.14–2.14) times more likely to be involved in a current medicolegal matter."

Click here to read the article online.

1 Million Women has a goal to empower 1 Million Women to collectively cut 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas pollutant triggering climate change. It is an Australian initiative with national forum series being held in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne in November and December.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" George Berkeley 12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753

A female senior colleague recently said to me: ‘Medical Women’s Society? That’s so passé! Surely given 60% of medical graduates are now women it’s the blokes who need a Medical Society…’

So what do you think? What is AFMW doing for you? Are we worth your $20 membership fee (that you pay as part of your State membership – you also pay $10 to belong to the MWIA…). Given that I am going to ask you to consider increasing that to $40, I would like you to read on, and to read the article below regarding Equal Opportunity and the Government review of the Act.

A paper published in the September edition of the ANZ Journal of Surgery reports that Australasian female surgeons exhibit higher levels of personal burnout and work related burnout than their male peers. A survey by the authors of "Burnout in Australasian Younger Fellows" (ANZ J Surg 79 (2009) 590-597) found that female gender was more significantly associated with burnout levels than long work hours (>60 hours a week). The authors state that the reason for the gender discrepancy is unclear and that “further enquiry into potentially remediable causes for the increased burnout in these groups is indicated."