Is low female presence in urology a brazilian issue?

Resumo

Introduction: The increased presence of women in different work spaces can be also seen in Medicine. Although there's still a majority of men, 54.4% in 2017, women are the youngest doctors in the country, counting 55%. This number has been increasing since 1970, and in 2014 women have become responsible for most new medical records. However, this growth in the medical world has been restricted to some specialties. Urology, the focus of this study, remains the specialty with fewer women. In 2013, 1.7% of the graduates were female, and in 2018 rose to only 2.2%, one of the smallest growths among 53 specialties (only bigger than neurosurgery, 0.32%). Low female adherence is often justified by cultural issues, prejudice, misinformation and also the patient's supposed difficulty in opening up about her sexuality with a female doctor. The purpose of this study is to analyze the presence of women in urology in different countries and compare them with national data using publicly accessible information.
Objective: Compare and analyze Brazilian statistics of the presence of women in urology with different countries in the last 10 years.
Methodology: A bibliographical research was conducted with Brazilian statistics and compared to different international data on the presence of women in urology between 2008 and 2018. The information was collected by means of official free access data available online.
Results: Data were collected from countries in different continents. The Brazilian data show a growth of the female presence in urology that is insignificant in the analyzed period, being one of the lowest of the data found. Other countries, such as France - which grew from 2.75% to 6.93% - had a more significant increase in female presence, although not following the expected increase. The United States, on the other hand, grew from 4.7% to 8.7%, which is closer to the general reality of medicine in the country (6.9%).
Conclusion: The collected data indicate that the absence of women in urology is not a strictly Brazilian problem, however, it seems to be worse in Brazil. Further studies on the subject are needed in order to better understand the scenario of the presence of women in urology.