International Journal of Arts and Sciences Conference Proceedings, Austria, vol.3, pp.151
In recent Turkey, although the number of women with a university degree has been increasing
in the last decades, women are still the secondary sex in many fields of the public sphere. In
fact, quite a lot of women have a respectful position in the public realm. Currently, the number
of women who have been working in highly important professions such as medicine,
academy, engineering and law has been increasing. However, the role which they are playing
presently in a variety of ranks of the public sphere does not seem promising. This article
investigates the role of women surgeons in an important field of the public realm, medical
sphere in Turkey. It aims at exploring gender relations through the lenses of social structures
in a hospital in Turkey where both men and women surgeons are employed. The method
chosen is the face-to-face interviews with both women and men surgeons. Since becoming a
surgeon is one of the most difficult areas of the medical arena with a capacity of higher
income due to operations and it is highly men dominated, the major aim of the study is to
investigate particularly this field of medicine which has a highly gender segregated
organizational structure.