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Sex differences in the medical profession

22 April 2018

There is much discussion about sex differences in the medical profession. Female doctors earn less, and are less likely to be senior authors on academic papers...

There is much discussion about sex differences in the medical profession. Female doctors earn less, and are less likely to be senior authors on academic papers, yet they are less likely to be sanctioned, and have been found to perform better academically. We have replicated the difference in academic performance in a large cohort, 7670 doctors, taking the MRCP (UK) PACES exam, both in the UK and internationally. Even controlling for other variables, female doctors outperformed their male counterparts. The difference was largest in the non-UK subgroup, but the effect was still significant in UK graduates.

Unwin E, Potts HWW, Dacre J, Elder A, Woolf K (2018). Passing MRCP (UK) PACES: A cross-sectional study examining the performance of doctors by sex and country. BMC Medical Education 18:70. doi: 10.1186/s12909-018-1178-2