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In recent years, more and more women have been entering into the practice of medicine. Women will definitely have an effect on medicine, but how does being a physician affect the woman? What are the stresses of professional life that women have to face, and how have they dealt with them?
For many years, I have been especially interested in problems of career women that result from their increasing participation in what has been considered “a man's world.” This pertains not only to women in medicine but to women in many other professions and careers such as law, business, government, and banking, where women now have unprecedented opportunities for high-level commitment and responsibility.
Many women find that while they are intellectually capable, they are often emotionally unprepared for the situations they encounter. The competitiveness, the power politics, the need for constant assertion of one's identity, all present special problems to individuals who have traditionally been in the background. Added to this are the complications that develop if a professional woman marries and has children. In my practice, as well as among my colleagues, I have seen many professional woman who have had difficulties because of these pressures. Some seek help because of symptoms brought on by stress, such as severe anxiety, apprehension, and panic; some are depressed and some have psychosomatic symptoms. Physicians as a group have a higher incidence of depression than does the general population, and within this group, women physicians have a higher incidence than do men.1 What is the source of these difficulties in professional women and how can we alleviate them?
Women have always worked. The stress I am referring to is not derived from hard work-but from other factors. Women are now working with goals different from those they had formerly. In the past, most women who worked outside the home did so out of necessity to earn needed money or worked temporarily while waiting to get m