Abstract
BackgroundDuring professional identity formation (PIF), medical students and young doctors enter the process of socialization in medicine with their preexisting personal identities. Here, the authors focused on how gender influences both the professional and personal identities of doctors. The authors’ particular research question was how the professional and personal identities of female doctors are formed in Japan, a patriarchal and highly masculinized country, especially before and after marriage and childbirth.MethodsNarrative inquiry was used as the research methodology. The authors purposively sampled 10 unmarried and 15 married Japanese female physicians with varying lengths of full-time work experience and conducted individual semi-structured face-to-face interviews between July 2013 and February 2015. The authors recorded, transcribed and anonymized the narrative data and extracted themes and representative narratives related to the formation of professional and personal identities. Based on these, the authors developed the master narrative for the whole study.ResultsThe PIF process by which female physicians integrate personal and professional identities was profoundly affected by gender stereotypes. Further, participant narratives revealed the existence of conflict between married and unmarried female doctors, which created a considerable gap between them.ConclusionsFemale physicians lived with conflicting emotions in a chain of gender stereotype reinforcement. To overcome these issues, we propose that it is necessary to depart from a culture that determines merit based on a fixed sense of values, and instead develop a cultural system and work environment which allows the cultivation of a professional vision that accepts a wide variety of professional and personal identities, and a similarly wide variety of methods by which the two can be integrated.
Highlights
During professional identity formation (PIF), medical students and young doctors enter the process of socialization in medicine with their preexisting personal identities
We present our findings about the process of professional identity formation in female doctors in Japan and how it is engaged with personal identity formation
We demonstrated that unmarried female doctors looked down upon married female doctors who established a personal identity which conformed to gender stereotypes
Summary
During professional identity formation (PIF), medical students and young doctors enter the process of socialization in medicine with their preexisting personal identities. The authors focused on how gender influences both the professional and personal identities of doctors. The authors’ particular research question was how the professional and personal identities of female doctors are formed in Japan, a patriarchal and highly masculinized country, especially before and after marriage and childbirth. Matsui et al BMC Medical Education (2019) 19:55 considered due to a lack of role models and gender awareness as compared with male physicians [6]. Little is known about the longitudinal process of female doctors’ professional and personal identity formation, especially in the postgraduate setting associated with marriage and childbirth
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