If there exists something like a list of Czech feminists’ enemies, then the president of Czech Medical Chamber Milan Kubek will soon occupy its top position.
“A woman’s dedication to the job can never compare to the dedication men have,” Kubek said last week to the deputies from the health committee.
Just as he uttered these words, a murmur of excited voices spread through the room. Some smiled, others sighed in disbelief.
As if the president of the chamber quickly realized his politically incorrect statement, he said: “Women do not take that many shifts because of their families”.
In other words: Female doctors have to take care of their children and cook for their husbands; therefore, they work less at the hospital than their male colleagues. That is why the “feminisation of the Czech healthcare system” is alarming. Kubek was talking about the growing number of female doctors in his lecture on the lack of doctors in the Czech Republic.
He was talking about the feminisation in connection with other problems like falling numbers of medical school graduates, doctors leaving the country to work abroad and ageing hospital and clinic staff.
Harvard example
“I’m on vacation,” Kubek said on the weekend. Questions arise: Can patients’ health condition get worse because of female doctors who have to pick up their children from kindergarten instead of working a shift? And isn’t this kind of thinking exactly what is preventing the society from getting rid of the male chauvinism label? Isn’t this what keeps women at the stove?
It is very probable that Kubek did not intend his remark to be an attack on the expert quality of Czech female doctors, he rather wanted to describe the difficulties that hospitals have to cope with. But the consequences of such statements can be seen in the case of a close colleague of the current American president Barack Obama – the head of the National Economic Council Lawrence Summers.
In 2005, Summers, at that time president of the Harvard University, said that men are better suited to become first-rate scientists. And he also presented statistics, calculations and studies to support his argument. However, notes from the forum, where Summers was holding his presentation, got to the media – a year later, he succumbed to the pressure and left his post.
The former minister for human rights, psychiatrist Džamila Stehlíková (Green Party), said the president of the medical chamber deserves to be reprimanded for his statements. “Such a statement undermines women’s right to free practice of a profession,” she said.
Nurses, not doctors
Vladimír Beneš, head of neurosurgery clinic at the Central Military Hospital in Prague, does not agree with Kubek.
“It’s nonsense. If there’s something wrong with the Czech healthcare system, it’s the quality of the nurses, not female doctors,” the professor told HN.
It seems to be a matter of opinion, howver. For example, Pavel Klener, former director of the Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion, said he understood Kubek’s words.
“I know what he meant. Female doctors are as good as male doctors. But when there are no grandmothers [to look after the children], women cannot put as much effort into their job as men. Unfortunately, that’s the way it is,” Klener said.
