»Oh well, it’s not an illness per se«

Abstract

Within Germany there exists a gender gap in professional relations of the medical fields. Whereas the majority of medical students are women, they are still highly underrepresented in leading positions. Research has indicated, that the incompatibility of medical careers and family life is considered a main factor contributing to this imbalance. By means of qualitative interviews and psychoanalytically oriented methods, in our study we investigate this gender gap psychosocially. Specifically, we explore how the mothers’ ‘opting’ out of a university hospital career results from reinterpretations of their career choice following discriminating experiences. In our interviews, the women doctors, who, as mothers, ‘opted out’ of their careers or interrupted them, frequently describe conflicts with their superiors, when they reported being pregnant. Our comparative case study shows, how transmitted traditional ideas of motherhood and femininity become dominant only in the context of professional dependency relations. Those patterns are successively (re)produced by the medical doctors, their superiors and in the family relationships. In an ‘extreme’ case, discrimination entails the (re)internalization of a polarized image of ‘mother/woman’ between the poles of idealization and devaluation, which leads to legitimizing and naturalizing of traditional gender roles. However, what is brought to light by the single case study, might also illuminate other career breaks framed by structures of dependency in university hospitals. ‘Opting out’ can symbolize independence and autonomy while coping with conflicts resulting from dependency relations and discrimination.