Today women are taking an increasingly active role in the political, economic, scientific and cultural life of various countries. A similar trend is observed in medicine: if the famous doctors of the past were overwhelmingly represented by men, then a tendency towards an increase in the women role in the medical community has become increasingly evident since the second half of the 20th century. In particular, there has been an increase in the number of female neurosurgeons over the past decades, but their percentage remains significantly lower in comparison with both other medical specialities and sex ratio of medical graduates, which is largely due to gender discrimination [1–3]. The degree of professional gender inequality is also influenced by cultural, historical, political and other factors that determine the general level of sexism in a particular society [4-5]. Since any discrimination leads to a competition decrease, recently in some countries, not only the problem of gender inequality in medicine is being discussed more and more actively, but also concrete actions are being taken to eliminate it [6].
Research objective: to determine the structure of a female neurosurgeon perception in the Russian neurosurgical community.
Materials and methods The research is based on an anonymous survey of neurosurgeons working in Russia. The authors developed two questionnaires separately for men and women. The questionnaires included several blocks containing information on the individual and professional characteristics and perception characteristics of a neurosurgeon woman role. Many questions were identical in both questionnaires. The number of doctors interviewed was 103, 53 of which were men and 50 were women. Statistical data processing was carried out using the STATISTICA 10 program, the distribution normality was assessed using the Shapiro-Wilk test, and the Mann-Whitney test was used to assess the significance of differences in the compared groups. The distribution was described as mean value ± standard deviation (M±SD) for quantitative indicators and as a median with maximum and minimum values (Mdn [max;min]).