New Generation of Female Doctors: Beyond Gender Segregation

In Italy, the feminization of medicine is a relatively recent phenomenon, which accelerated in the 1970s when the percentage of women practicing the profession rose from 8.8% in 1971 to 23.2% in 1991, reaching 30.1% in 2000 (Vicarelli 2008) and 42.7% in 2018 (a percentage that increased to 43.3% in 2022 among physicians working for the National Health Service) (Conto annuale della Ragioneria generale dello Stato 2022). In this context, the challenging questions are: does the increased presence of women coincide with a shift in the prevailing models of professionalism? And again, how and to what extent are the informal regulatory mechanisms and operational practices, which have been defined around male professional, changing? While asking these questions, it is important to also consider another transformative process: generational change, with the advent of a new generation of professionals (Millennials and Gen Z) who embody values and attitudes completely different from the past. Since young doctors graduating today are predominantly women, there is no doubt that the glass ceiling will be broken, and women will soon acquire top positions. But what changes will occur then? Are women ready to take on these roles and greater responsibility? Some in Italy have been working for years on this passing of the baton: women physicians from Anaao, the main medical union, have asserted their ability to organize themselves and influence roles, knowledge, and both simple and specialized skills in the complex world of healthcare. They are focusing on multidisciplinarity and the cross-fertilization of knowledge (Morano 2021). Presenting data from two different empirical studies, this paper attempts to interpret these processes on a theoretical level.