Clear Gender Gap for Japan’s Doctors

A 2018 survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare found that just 21.9% of Japan’s doctors are women, with a total of 71,758 compared with 255,452 men. The total for women increased by 6.3% since the last survey in 2016, whereas the number of men only rose by 1.4%.

Female doctors have been slowly on the increase since 1990, with a higher ratio in the younger generations. By age range at medical institutions (hospitals and clinics), the highest percentage were aged 29 or under (35.9%), followed by 30-39 years old (31.2%), 40-49 years old (26.3%), and 50-59 years old (16.6%).

An uneven distribution could also be seen in the number of women doctors across departments. At hospitals, the departments of dermatology, obstetrics and gynecology, mammary gland surgery, ophthalmology, and anesthesiology have a greater number of female patients and the work involves relatively few long hours and less irregular schedules.

Dermatology, in particular, has 54.8% women doctors; the one department in the survey where the ratio exceeded that of men. Other specialties with more than 40% women doctors were obstetrics and gynecology (44.5%), mammary gland surgery (44.1%), ophthalmology (42.4%), and anesthesiology (40.9%). In contrast, eight other departments had a ratio of less than 10% women doctors, including neurosurgery with 6.5%, cardiovascular surgery and orthopedic surgery both with 6.2%, and tracheoesophageal surgery with only 2.5%. This same bias could be seen in clinics too.

Women Doctors Working in Hospitals by Specialty

Created by Nippon.com based on data from the 2018 Survey on Physicians, Dentists, and Pharmacists.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo: ©foly/ PIXTA)