A recent headlines in the Times of India caught my eye , it
read “More women study medicine ,but few practise.” The article essentially
spoke of how women are unable to balance work and home and many choose to
forfeit their medical degree for their marital duties.
The article speaks of how 50.6% of admissions into a medical
college are women, but only 17% of allopathic doctors were women. to read the whole article press
here.
As a new mom and
currently on a sabattical from work, I can in a way identify with the herculean
task of balancing work and family.
Early into my pregnancy, or rather even before I conceived,
I was well aware that I stood at a disadvantage to my non-doctor friends.
First, as a doctor in a private hospital,
I did not get paid maternity leave. Unlike government positions, a doctor
working in a private hospital is not always paid for the 3 to 6 months that she
takes to raise her new born. Doctors, especially those who have their own
practices, or are freelancing in multiple hospitals, are essentially ‘daily wage earners’; they earn as much
as they work, and for as many days.
This early realisation that I was more akin to my local
bhajiwali, who got paid depending on the wares she sold, and whom I wouldn’t
dream of paying if she decided to go on a maternity leave, made me feel more
kindly towards her. I stopped bargaining for the extra 5 rupees, I even paid my
cleaning woman her bonus, knowing fully well that these ‘working women’ were
trying to balance a home and work, without the benefits of a government plan to
safe guard our interests as we brought up the next generation of Indians.
The slogan says “beti
bachao, beti padhao’ no where does it say, ‘beti ko job dilao’!
My friends working with multinationals and corporates spoke
of their ‘maternity leave packages’ and ‘work from home’ plans, and ‘in house
crèches and daycares’ within their companies. True, these were non-government jobs,
and many of them financed by foreign investments, and yet, they seemed to care
about the ‘working Indian woman’ more than many ‘indian companies’ did.
I did finally come to terms with my not getting any ‘paid
maternity leave’, and then contemplated about my medical insurance.
It’s an honest declaration that doctors are extremely poor
with understanding investments and finances. Maybe it is our inherent dislike
for numbers, or the fact that we start earning much later than our counterparts
in any other profession. And medical insurance is something we doctors
take extremely lightly, especially so early in life. All the minor ailments
are easily solved by a quick call to another doctor friend, most doctors
(atleast the ones that I have met) don’t charge other doctors any consultation
fees as part of the unspoken ethical code we follow.
If being ‘jobless’ was
scary enough for me, the fact that no health insurance covered
pregnancy/delivery/newborn care was another new revelation.
We were going from a double income family of two, to a single
earning member of a family of three! With the loss of around six months of pay
as well as the added costs of hospitals, as well as a full time baby care if I
ever wanted to join back work, the financial dilemma was obvious.
For doctors there is also the question of ‘losing our
practice’. Our patients would need to see other doctors in our absence, and
what are the chances that they would return once I resumed work?
I don’t know about the 50.6% of female doctors who decided
to take up the medical studies, but I always planned on practicing my knowledge
and not just because I wanted to gain
degrees.
Yes, it’s true some parents hope that a degree will help
their daughters marry a better prospective husband, and they never intended to use their medical degree for any other
reason, but if a degree is all that one is after,I can think of less
gruelling courses to apply for.
Is it not sad then,
that after excelling in competitive exams, burning the midnight oil, many
female medical graduates have the coveted Dr. in front of their name, but are
essentially homemakers?
Don’t get me wrong, being a home maker is bloody hard work!
If the last couple of months have taught me anything, then
it is that staying up feeding, burping and rocking to sleep a baby, is as tough
as any night duties I did as a doctor (maybe even tougher on some nights). The physical tolls of motherhood, the
continuous undivided attention that a baby demands is more than the most
demanding bosses in any profession.
It’s like an alarm without the snooze button, which can ring
at any given time day or night. You are never on a coffee break, and you can
never call in sick, neither are there any furloughs as a mother. I have done it
only for 5 months and I can only imagine, how many women volunteer to do it all
their life. Being a stay at home mom is a demanding job, more demanding than
maybe even being a doctor, and yet I want to be able to practice my profession.
Why is it so difficult for doctors? First, there is no concept of ‘working from home’ doctors. Maybe in
years to come we will have online consultations and doctors working in atleast
a few fields will be able to work from home, but all in all medicine is a field
where we need to palpate, percuss, auscultate and do various hands on tests on
a patient. Secondly, many medical
fields have emergencies and do not have flexible timings, say an anaesthetist
who is dependent on the surgeons hours, or a gynaecologist who can hardly
decide when her patients go into labour.
Nuclear families have
made the need for caretakers a necessity, and unlike multinationals which have
in-house crèches, very few hospitals have such facilities for their doctors. As
one hospital administrator once told me ‘
Hospitals
don’t owe doctors anything’. In an age where we are well into second
generation working moms, and where
even
grandmothers are working women , we can hardly hope for ‘
grandmaternity leave’ where we expect
working grandmothers to leave their jobs and look after the grandchildren. (to read my article on caretakers and nannies read ..
here)
India is going through ‘growing pains’ where we want our
women to work, but we want them to look after home and hearth as well. Doctor- moms,
who always kept their patients first, find their priorities changing once they
have children and they become mom-doctors where they are moms first.
As I inch towards the arbitrary 6 months period , after
which it is generally considered that women who hope to have a professional
life start to resume the role of a ‘working mother’ rather than just a ‘mother’,
I will soon be lifting the balancing scales. Sometimes they will tip in favour
of being a mom, and I will be judged as not being professional enough, and
sometimes they will tip towards my work and again I will be criticised for
neglecting my child. I realise that the balance will continue to swing up and
down and I may very well never have the perfect balance. But, I hope that I am
part of the 17 % women doctors who are practicing doctors, for then I will know
that I have beaten the odds. And even if I meet a doctor mother who chose to
not practice, I will not judge her by saying that she let her weighing scale
fall or that she lost her balance, it’s just that she decided to weigh her life
on a different scale.
