Dr Sarah Fitzgibbon is lighting up the dark with a medical network for women
“we Of Each Jim Other Dr Up Out Coughlan Reach Sarah And Other,” Wimin Says Lift Fitzgibbon Each To Picture:
In the depths of winter and at a dark time in her life, Dr Sarah Fitzgibbon saw a chink of light.
She was undergoing chemotherapy to treat stage IV cancer in December 2017. With time on her hands, she began to scroll through Twitter. A post from the Medical Women’s Federation caught her attention – the British organisation was celebrating its centenary. She began to search online and soon found the Medical Women’s International Association and similar groups in Japan, India and Nigeria. Female doctors in Ireland had no such support network.
Fitzgibbon posted a Tweet asking if women doctors here were interested in setting up an association and got an enthusiastic response. It was the first step towards establishing the Women in Medicine in Ireland Network (WiMIN). Its first conference was held in Dublin in September 2018 with 100 attendees, ranging from women in senior medical positions to medical students.
The organisation aims to support, promote and encourage female doctors and medical students through peer support and raise women's visibility in medicine. “If you can’t see, you can’t be,” says Fitzgibbon, who lives in Cork.
It also offers women the opportunity to connect in an informal setting. In male-dominated specialities men tend to “connect with each other in ways women might not – for example, going golfing, or to a rugby game,” says Fitzgibbon.
WiMIN has a long-term vision - advocating for structural changes that will allow women in medicine to achieve their goals. “We lift each other up and reach out to each other,” says Fitzgibbon.
She points to the “unpaid” work that women often undertake, the “extra burden” they have compared to men. “EU research shows that when men and women work full-time, women will work 1.2 hours extra per day, and if they have children, then the time is significantly more in terms of domestic labour.”
While medical graduates are now almost equally divided between males and females, gender imbalances in some specialities remain. “You find more women than men in public health, paediatrics, primary care, psychiatry and in recent years obstetrics. In surgery, cardiology and rheumatology, they have traditionally had more men than women,” says Fitzgibbon.
“We notice that if a speciality has more women, it is less well renumerated relative to those with more men, which tend to have higher status and earnings”.
A similar gender imbalance in leadership positions can be found in hospitals or hospital groups. “The balance in clinical directorships is still in favour of men. Also, some 20% of full professorships are held by women across all areas of academia.” Fitzgibbon, a mother of three, responded well to treatment and is now working in the National Screening Service. She says she is grateful she doesn’t have the same amount of free time she had when sitting as a patient in the chemotherapy wards.
WiMIN was registered as a charity in 2021, and membership has climbed to 750. Given its founder's passion and drive – “it's part of my life” - there is every chance it will continue to grow.