Table 8.

Illustrative participant quotes on “gendered expectations” discouraging men from providing obstetrics

…I think there’s a very strong … almost an anti-male involvement as a medical student element of obstetrical floors and on birthing units. Which I think I saw less once I was a resident but was still present. So, I guess that experience with more obstetrics than I necessarily wanted actually cemented my desire not to do obstetrics. (Resident, man, NS)

… you wouldn’t get called for things [because of identifying as a man]. People would assume that I wasn’t interested. I worked with one… family doctor who did her own deliveries. And she didn’t call me for the first few deliveries because she thought I wasn’t truly interested in it because I was a guy. And only believed me when I showed up sick as a dog and said yes, please call me, I would like to do it, this is why I’m here. I’ve had a lot of trouble with that. (Family Physician, man, ON)

… it was very hard trying to get involved in obstetrics as a male. There’s a lot of institutional inertia against men in that. Or I felt that there was. (Family Physician, man, ON)

I think where it impacts me most, the fact that I’m male… is with prenatal and obstetrics simply because … women ask me questions about pregnancy and delivery and their bodies and such, and I can give them the academic and my own sort of experiential point of view, but I can’t truly empathize with what they’re going through… I think that puts me at a disadvantage and I think it affects my credibility a little bit in terms of talking through it with them… that bothers me but there’s nothing I can do about that. But I’m very aware of that. (Family Physician, man, NS)

…we did have a male physician, and we thoroughly enjoyed that. It kind of balanced things out. Because in obstetrics, as of lately, we’ve had mostly female obstetricians. We have all female staff, and all female midwives, and all female family practitioners. So, it’s nice to keep things a little even… we would love to have more males in our area of work. But that’s just not the case right now. (Family Physician, woman, NS)