females

If you look on Freida, it says that of the 3,002 residents/fellows, the average # of females is 8.5%. On the interview trail, I would say the applicant pool approximates that number. At some interviews there were a lot of women (like 4-6), whereas, at other programs there was like one.

I don't think any programs go out and advertise that they're anti-female, but at some interviews I've heard the residents say that the program won't take a woman, because they've had bad experiences with them in the past. I would say, watch out for programs that have had women quit on them, that probably makes it tougher for a woman to get in. You can't really figure out which programs have had women with bad personalities though.

Some programs that I've been to that might be female "friendly" are UT Southwestern which has like 5 female residents, Case Western has like 4, Northwestern has 3, and Stanford has a couple. I'm sure there's more programs out there with multiple female residents too.

Anti- female programs: Indianapolis (one XX applicant cried after interview), Cincinnati (resident's brag about scaring women off), only ones I have solid evidence for.

Pro-female: I agree strongly with UTSW (acually a joke there that a future intern class will be all XX genotype), CWRU, UCSD, UW

Being a female on "the circuit" only becomes an issue if YOU make it one. I didn't field a single question about being female, nor was I ever discouraged by anyone with whom I interviewed. Just relax, be yourself, and have some fun with the whole process.

I interviewed at UTSW and they have an average of one girl each year, with none in the PGY5 class and 2 in the PGY2 class - out of 6 residents/year that hardly qualifies as an excessively female program.

Texasortho, just wondering, what would you consider an excessively female program then? At UTSW there's 1 PGY4, 1 PGY3, 2 PGY2's, and 1 or 2 interns. That's a pretty impressive amount of women in my opinion. Are there programs out there with more women?

There is only one PGY1 female. I don't disagree that UTSW is female friendly in that they take one a year - my response was more directed to the previous post that joked about an escalating number of girls in the program.

I second the opinion on indianapolis...they had a female quit that would be in there third year class and they don't plan on taking another one any time soon.

The same applies to Kentucky, they had a female resident quit and are quite bitter. I was actually told that "it is a male profession" during one of my interviews.

I disagree with the statement about Kentucky...I interviewed there this year and got the impression that they are actually LOOKING for a female resident...I got this feeling more from the attendings than the residents, though

all I can say is that I used quotes on that comment from Kentucky because it was an exact quote from an attending that interviewed me. It was soon followed by "we won't be taking any more females for a while" That was a year ago and really the only negativ thing I could say about the experience. I still ended up ranking them in my top 5 and would have been happy there had I not ended up at my top choice. I did, however, feel quite sorry for the 5 females that were wasting their time and money there that day. Maybe things have changed in the last year...maybe Johnson has cooled off some of the attendings and residents since last January, but I know that it was very female unfriendly when I was there.

if you go to the home pages of the programs that you think you want to apply to, they usually have a list of current residents, and you can see for yourself which places are XX friendly or not by the number of women that they have in their program.

peace

I have to somewhat disagree with pimp...you can't alway tell by the website. We have only one female in my program, who is very happy. Last year we ranked a female number 1, but she chose to stay at her home program. This year, we offered interviews to 15 females all who declined interviews. You can't always tell how female friendly a program is by the number of female in the program. Obviously, a program with 20-30% females is famale friendly, but you can't say that one with only one )or none) is unfriendly.

OrthoChik,

Check out the December or January JBJS for an article on women in Orthopaedics. Think it was written by Laurel Blakemore at University of Michigan.