Abstract
This study assessed the role of women as fractional full-time equivalent (FTE) rural academics in the context of significant workforce shortage and increasing academic demand. The design was a cross-sectional cohort study conducted from June 2002 to June 2012. All Rural Clinical School teaching sites in Western Australia were included, numbering from 3 (at inception in 2002) to 13 in 2012. Participants were all clinicians employed as academic staff of The University of Western Australia since its inception. Teaching staff employed elsewhere were not included. Main outcome measures were the proportion of women employed in the Rural Clinical School and work characteristics including appointment fraction, duration and site leadership. Relative to the workforce at large, female academics were disproportionately employed in the Rural Clinical School with a relative risk of 1.28 (CI 1.0-1.64), χ²=2.0 p=0.46. Their likelihood of being Australian trained was 1.62 (CI 1.3-2.0), χ²=19.3, p=0.000 relative to the rural female GP workforce. Their FTE (t=1.0 p=0.295), time of tenure (t=1.19, p=0.24) and site leadership was indistinguishable from male Rural Clinical School academics. Female doctors who are willing to take on part-time work are supporting the rural medical teaching workforce.
Highlights
This study assessed the role of women as fractional full-time equivalent (FTE) rural academics in the context of significant workforce shortage and increasing academic demand
A further positive, which has not received the discussion it deserves, is the specific benefit of women in the workforce with respect to part-time work. This is usually cited as a negative factor associated with having a family[6]; this study aimed to examine the positive aspects of having parttime female doctors in the rural academic workforce, asking: 1. Are there significant numbers of women relative to men in this workforce?
Female medical coordinators (MCs) taught fulltime equivalents (FTE) that were indistinguishable from their male counterparts (t=1.0 p=0.295), as is shown (Table 1)
Summary
This study assessed the role of women as fractional full-time equivalent (FTE) rural academics in the context of significant workforce shortage and increasing academic demand. Main outcome measures were the proportion of women employed in the Rural Clinical School and work characteristics including appointment fraction, duration and site leadership. Results: Relative to the workforce at large, female academics were disproportionately employed in the Rural Clinical School with a relative risk of 1.28 (CI 1.0-1.64), χ2=2.0 p=0.46. Their likelihood of being Australian trained was 1.62 (CI 1.3-2.0), χ2=19.3, p=0.000 relative to the rural female GP workforce. Their FTE (t=1.0 p=0.295), time of tenure (t=1.19, p=0.24) and site leadership was indistinguishable from male Rural Clinical School academics. Some argue that these issues describe workforce discrimination[1,6]
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