Hospital doctors' career structure and misuse of medical womanpower.

Biological and culturel differences between men and women lead to severe discrimination against women doctors who bear the burdens of pregnancy, child-rearing, and housework. These lead, from equality within medical school and at qualification, to increasing failure to obtain posts commensurate with their innate abilities. Women doctors who temporarily and partially drop out of full-time practice have been studied frequently, but men (who are equally expensive to train) have not, despite their disappearing from National Health Service practice through emigration, death, alcoholism, suicide, or removal from the Medical Register. In a working lifetime of forty years, a woman doctor with an average family is likely to do seven-eighths of the work of a doctor who has not had to carry the primary responsibility of bearing and rearing children. Doctors with dependants are handicapped, and a separate career structure might be set up for them. Supernumerary consultant posts are proposed.