Does Stereotype Threat Dissuade Women from Pursuing Technical Specialties Such as Radiation Oncology? Narratives from Thematic Content Analysis of Medical Student Interviews
Faculty and Abstracts
Purpose: Women are underrepresented in many specialties that are considered highly technical with an emphasis on physics or mathematics. One such example is radiation oncology, where women constitute 30% of residency applicants and 28.5% of the practicing physicians. A potential explanation for this is stereotype threat hampering the self-efficacy of women. In other words, a perceived bias against the ability of women to succeed in these highly technical medical specialties may dissuade them from pursuing the specialty in the first place. The decision to pursue a given specialty is highly multifactorial and nuanced. In this project, we hope to elucidate whether stereotype threat dissuades women from pursuing technical specialties such as radiation oncology.
Methodology: Twenty-five medical students of all genders at all levels of training will be interviewed regarding their medical school journey and their thought process around specialty selection and future career pursuits. These interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and coded for thematic analysis.
Results: The narratives developed from this process will provide insight into the factors that influence medical student specialty selection and whether stereotype threat plays a role. This project is part of a larger work-in-progress funded by the American Board of Medical Specialties that aims to evaluate the impact of an experiential training module in radiation oncology to mitigate disparities in self-efficacy.
Conclusions: Future work on this project will also incorporate surveys on self-efficacy and explore implementation of an experiential training module to try and mitigate disparities in self-efficacy. If demonstrated to have a substantive impact, experiential modules could be implemented in certification across other medical specialties to improve recruitment and development of a diverse and equitable physician workforce.
