| Summary: | <p>Women now make up over half of all medical graduates in Canada yet continue to remain significantly underrepresented within the field of surgery. Institutional discourses and studies-to-date have largely framed this ‘problem’ as being located within women themselves, suggesting that it is their preferences and interests that lead to this numerical discrepancy. This thesis, therefore, sets out to investigate if there is more to the ‘problem’ apart from the individual by examining the broader systemic context in which these disparities are realized.</p>
<p>I use anthropological literature and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a surgical department in a Canadian hospital to explore how gender is experienced for women surgeons within the institution. By doing so, I reveal how gender is not an added component to the surgical world, but rather a central feature of it, embedded within the surgical ideology, habitus, somatic norm, and material culture. Because of this, I show the everyday forms of institutional gender exclusions that exist for women surgeons and how, due to the framing of the ‘problem’, women surgeons both resist and contribute to these exclusions.</p>
<p>Ultimately, this thesis sheds light on the fact that the framing of the ‘problem’ conceals the everyday structural inequities present for women surgeons within the institution. And further, that it limits the ability to challenge and change these inequities. My work thus offers considerations for how we can begin imagining meaningful systemic transformations for women in surgery which extends even beyond addressing their numerical underrepresentation.</p>
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