Institutional Sexism In Veterinary Medicine

[scombrid]

Part of that is because doctors are part of the health care economy and vets are not.

The health care economy is a protected economy and doctors are able to get money for difficult procedures because of insurance. They are getting less and less because they are not in control. But they are able to get paid for difficult procedures or for doing things that require a lot of training and skill.

Vets have a limit to what they can do. Difficult expensive procedures need to be paid for by the owner.

The "Blue Juice" definitely keeps costs in check in veterinary medicine.

Insurance as currently structured is a massive inflator for human medicine. There isn't a tax subsidized (like my insurance that is paid by my employer without that compensation being taxed as income) third party payer involved. The Vet Clinic/Hospital is paid directly for service rendered. You know exactly what you are paying and for what.

The insurance scam has been trying to push its way into veterinary medicine but it is a fringe thing right now like "extended warrantees" sold at applicance/electronics stores and isn't really making a dent in the market or price structure.

Human medicine would be a lot cheaper and generally a better value for outcome to cost ratio if you paid for what you could afford direct to medical providers and then blue juiced out when something really expensive came along. Of course we won't generally blue juice a 50 year old person with a bad back whereas that snippy little 9 year old dachshund might killed with a blown disc. (We have a 14 year old Dachshund that blew a disc at age 8. His family was going to kill him but we rehabbed him and also had a $5000 fund set aside in case he went down again). It is crazy how cheap ACL reconstruction and back surgery are for dogs. There isn't a human life at stake but the technology and skill needed to do it right are the same.

- - - Updated - - -

But is it sexism, or indeed institutional sexism? That's the question.

No and I don't think that is the point of the opening post.

Opening post is arguing opposite in a way; providing an example of an unbalance that is not a result of an institutional bias so as to argue that claims of institutional bias are without merit.

 

[scombrid]

Toni gets into what is biasing the make up of the talent pool that is applying to graduate schools in science; something I started to do when I posted my anecdote about demographic shifts at my old school.

 

[untermensche]

Insurance is not a scam.

A nationalized health insurance system that most people used would speed a lot of things up and tighten control on reimbursement to doctors.

Frankly I want the surgeon doing my CABG well paid and very happy.

And I want the skilled medical professions to be very well paid so that they attract the best and competition for the specialty is fierce.

I would like to also see a nationalized malpractice service to cheapen malpractice insurance.

I want the doctors better taken care of then the bankers.

 

[scombrid]

Insurance is not a scam.

Depends on how it is structured.

 

[untermensche]

Insurance is not a scam.

Depends on how it is structured.

That is true about football too. American or European.

 

[ruby sparks]

"Modern computer science is a male-dominated field. A survey reveals that 92% of software engineers are men. But it hasn’t always been this way.

Did you know that there was once a time when computer programming was a women’s field?"

http://www.sysgen.com.ph/articles/why-women-stopped-coding/27216



"It turns out programming is hard, and women are actually just as good at it as men.

What changed?

On the part of the male programmers, there was a deliberate, concerted effort to elevate their work out of the “women’s work” category.

They formed professional associations and discouraged the hiring of women. There were even advertisements framing women as error prone and inefficient."

 

[Toni]

Insurance is not a scam.

A nationalized health insurance system that most people used would speed a lot of things up and tighten control on reimbursement to doctors.

Frankly I want the surgeon doing my CABG well paid and very happy.

And I want the skilled medical professions to be very well paid so that they attract the best and competition for the specialty is fierce.

I would like to also see a nationalized malpractice service to cheapen malpractice insurance.

I want the doctors better taken care of then the bankers.

The bulk of the cost of medical care is not the care itself nor is it the cost of medicines ( usually). A tremendous portion of every dollar spent towards medical expenses actually pays for administrative costs, including billing insurance and patients.

 

[untermensche]

Insurance is not a scam.

A nationalized health insurance system that most people used would speed a lot of things up and tighten control on reimbursement to doctors.

Frankly I want the surgeon doing my CABG well paid and very happy.

And I want the skilled medical professions to be very well paid so that they attract the best and competition for the specialty is fierce.

I would like to also see a nationalized malpractice service to cheapen malpractice insurance.

I want the doctors better taken care of then the bankers.

The bulk of the cost of medical care is not the care itself nor is it the cost of medicines ( usually). A tremendous portion of every dollar spent towards medical expenses actually pays for administrative costs, including billing insurance and patients.

And single payer systems are more efficient.

Right now we have levels of care depending on insurance.

If you have insurance you are going to get things a person without insurance will not get.

 

[laughing dog]

Objection: The number of schools is irrelevant. What counts is the number of slots vs the number of people who want to get in.

Objections -there are at least 4.5 times as many med schools as vet schools (closer to 6 if you count DO schools). Do you have any evidence that entering classes are 4.5 to 6 times larger in vet schools than med schools? Until you post such evidence, your responses are irrelevant.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Objection: The number of schools is irrelevant. What counts is the number of slots vs the number of people who want to get in.

Vet schools are not larger than med schools. There are many fewer vet schools in the US than there are med schools. There are many fewer slots for prospective vet students than there are for med students. It’s just simply numbers.

B

Then schools are a reasonable proxy for slots. It's slots vs demand that matters, though. Don't obsess on the proxies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What I would like to know is how many of those vet students are med school rejects or knew they didn't have what it takes to get into med school. Without considering that the data is worthless.

You could Google that. Most vet schools have their incoming class profiles public (GRE scores, GPA stats, etc...)

What you are listing as stuff I could Google is not the issue I brought up. I was questioning whether the pool was distorted by the related path of medical school.

 

[Toni]

What I would like to know is how many of those vet students are med school rejects or knew they didn't have what it takes to get into med school. Without considering that the data is worthless.

You could Google that. Most vet schools have their incoming class profiles public (GRE scores, GPA stats, etc...)

What you are listing as stuff I could Google is not the issue I brought up. I was questioning whether the pool was distorted by the related path of medical school.

I have obviously not spoken with every single student who applied to and was rejected by medical schools nor have I spoken with every student who applied to vet schools. But as others have stated in this thread, while the undergraduate coursework is the same for medical school and for vet school, the goals of the students are not the same. Students who want to be vets usually have decided that is what they want early on, often before starting college. Students who want to be physicians and do not get into medical school often pursue other careers altogether, often unrelated to medicine. I have never known a single medical school reject who then applied to vet school. Possibly, it happens but it's not that likely. There are many fewer slots in vet schools available and many well qualified applicants who are eager to be vets. And there are interviews. Why would any vet school want someone who couldn't get into medical school? Why would they want anyone for whom veterinary medicine was not their first choice of career?

 

[Jarhyn]

I can't help but think about a long running gag in the popular Netflix cartoon "F is For Family", and the entirety of "Ron Burgundy". In the timescale of that stupid fucking graph from the OP, there was a significant bias against women in medicine and science. Women were steered away from those occupations heavily in favor of men, despite the fact that the majority of interest in veterinary science that has been expressed to me over the course of my life has come from women (with the exception of my husband, who was, ironically enough, thought to be a woman at the time he expressed an interest in veterinary science.)

So, given the population differences in interest, and the accompanying reduction in bias against women in those fields which closely matches the timeline of that dumb fucking graph from the OP, I don't see why it would have turned out any other way.

This isn't a sign of institutional sexism, but rather a sign of the end or reduction of an institutional sexism. That the OP doesn't take into account the historical context, particularly in the late 70's and early 80's, is, I think, a pretty big flaw in their argument.

 

[Trausti]

I can't help but think about a long running gag in the popular Netflix cartoon "F is For Family", and the entirety of "Ron Burgundy". In the timescale of that stupid fucking graph from the OP, there was a significant bias against women in medicine and science. Women were steered away from those occupations heavily in favor of men, despite the fact that the majority of interest in veterinary science that has been expressed to me over the course of my life has come from women (with the exception of my husband, who was, ironically enough, thought to be a woman at the time he expressed an interest in veterinary science.)

So, given the population differences in interest, and the accompanying reduction in bias against women in those fields which closely matches the timeline of that dumb fucking graph from the OP, I don't see why it would have turned out any other way.

This isn't a sign of institutional sexism, but rather a sign of the end or reduction of an institutional sexism. That the OP doesn't take into account the historical context, particularly in the late 70's and early 80's, is, I think, a pretty big flaw in their argument.

Right. It's not. It's an example that 5 million years of evolution have made humans - like nearly every other animal - sexually dimorphic. Men and women, generally, are interested in different things. The purpose of the OP is to contrast the gender disparity in veterinary medicine with gender disparities in other areas. As you point out, the disparities are often not due to sexism or discrimination.

 

[Toni]

I can't help but think about a long running gag in the popular Netflix cartoon "F is For Family", and the entirety of "Ron Burgundy". In the timescale of that stupid fucking graph from the OP, there was a significant bias against women in medicine and science. Women were steered away from those occupations heavily in favor of men, despite the fact that the majority of interest in veterinary science that has been expressed to me over the course of my life has come from women (with the exception of my husband, who was, ironically enough, thought to be a woman at the time he expressed an interest in veterinary science.)

So, given the population differences in interest, and the accompanying reduction in bias against women in those fields which closely matches the timeline of that dumb fucking graph from the OP, I don't see why it would have turned out any other way.

This isn't a sign of institutional sexism, but rather a sign of the end or reduction of an institutional sexism. That the OP doesn't take into account the historical context, particularly in the late 70's and early 80's, is, I think, a pretty big flaw in their argument.

Right. It's not. It's an example that 5 million years of evolution have made humans - like nearly every other animal - sexually dimorphic. Men and women, generally, are interested in different things. The purpose of the OP is to contrast the gender disparity in veterinary medicine with gender disparities in other areas. As you point out, the disparities are often not due to sexism or discrimination.

I haven’t noticed that men and women are interested in different things, for the most part.

 

[Trausti]

I can't help but think about a long running gag in the popular Netflix cartoon "F is For Family", and the entirety of "Ron Burgundy". In the timescale of that stupid fucking graph from the OP, there was a significant bias against women in medicine and science. Women were steered away from those occupations heavily in favor of men, despite the fact that the majority of interest in veterinary science that has been expressed to me over the course of my life has come from women (with the exception of my husband, who was, ironically enough, thought to be a woman at the time he expressed an interest in veterinary science.)

So, given the population differences in interest, and the accompanying reduction in bias against women in those fields which closely matches the timeline of that dumb fucking graph from the OP, I don't see why it would have turned out any other way.

This isn't a sign of institutional sexism, but rather a sign of the end or reduction of an institutional sexism. That the OP doesn't take into account the historical context, particularly in the late 70's and early 80's, is, I think, a pretty big flaw in their argument.

Right. It's not. It's an example that 5 million years of evolution have made humans - like nearly every other animal - sexually dimorphic. Men and women, generally, are interested in different things. The purpose of the OP is to contrast the gender disparity in veterinary medicine with gender disparities in other areas. As you point out, the disparities are often not due to sexism or discrimination.

I haven’t noticed that men and women are interested in different things, for the most part.

Yeah, I don't believe that.

 

[Trausti]

Patriarchy paradox: how equality reinforces stereotypes

We all know what is meant to happen when the genders become more equal. As women smash glass ceilings and open up education, other differences should disappear too.

Without the psychological shackles of being the second sex, women are free to think and behave as they want; to become physicists or chief executives, unfettered by outdated stereotypes.

Yet to the confusion of psychologists, we are seeing the reverse. The more gender equality in a country, the greater the difference in the way men and women think. It could be called the patriarchy paradox.

“It seems that as gender equality increases, as countries become more progressive, men and women gravitate towards traditional gender norms,” Dr Mac Giolla said. “Why is this happening? I really don’t know.”

Steve Stewart-Williams, from the University of Nottingham, said that there was too much evidence of this effect to consider it a fluke. “It’s not just personality. The same counter-intuitive pattern has been found in choice of academic speciality, choice of occupation, crying frequency, depression, happiness and interest in casual sex.

“It’s definitely a challenge to one prominent stream of feminist theory, according to which almost all the differences between the sexes come from cultural training and social roles.”

Dr Stewart-Williams, author of The Ape That Understood the Universe, said an explanation could be that those living in wealthier and more genderequal societies have greater freedom to pursue their own interests and behave more individually, so magnifying natural differences.

Whatever the reason for the findings, he argued that they mean we should stop thinking of sex differences in society as being automatically a product of oppression. “These differences may be indicators of the opposite: a relatively free and fair society,” he said.

 

[Trausti]

Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children

 

[J842P]

I can't help but think about a long running gag in the popular Netflix cartoon "F is For Family", and the entirety of "Ron Burgundy". In the timescale of that stupid fucking graph from the OP, there was a significant bias against women in medicine and science. Women were steered away from those occupations heavily in favor of men, despite the fact that the majority of interest in veterinary science that has been expressed to me over the course of my life has come from women (with the exception of my husband, who was, ironically enough, thought to be a woman at the time he expressed an interest in veterinary science.)

So, given the population differences in interest, and the accompanying reduction in bias against women in those fields which closely matches the timeline of that dumb fucking graph from the OP, I don't see why it would have turned out any other way.

This isn't a sign of institutional sexism, but rather a sign of the end or reduction of an institutional sexism. That the OP doesn't take into account the historical context, particularly in the late 70's and early 80's, is, I think, a pretty big flaw in their argument.

Right. It's not. It's an example that 5 million years of evolution have made humans - like nearly every other animal - sexually dimorphic. Men and women, generally, are interested in different things. The purpose of the OP is to contrast the gender disparity in veterinary medicine with gender disparities in other areas. As you point out, the disparities are often not due to sexism or discrimination.

I haven’t noticed that men and women are interested in different things, for the most part.

Well, there's a whole body of social science that does notice this.

 

[scombrid]

or knew they didn't have what it takes to get into med school.

You could Google that. Most vet schools have their incoming class profiles public (GRE scores, GPA stats, etc...)

What you are listing as stuff I could Google is not the issue I brought up. I was questioning whether the pool was distorted by the related path of medical school.

"what it takes" to get into school is entirely relevant to the issue that you brought up.