Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ukranian Women Physicians at a Post-Socialist Crossroad: The Factors Behind Their Increasing Participation in Biomedicine

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Graduate student, Maryna Y. Bazylevych, supervised by Dr. Gail Landsman, will investigate the factors behind growing number of women in the biomedical profession in Ukraine. As socioeconomic transformations unfold in post-socialist Ukraine, many previously feminized professions with relatively high socioeconomic status are becoming men's domain. In contrast to this typical pattern, the proportion of practicing women physicians in the Ukraine is steadily growing and now approaches 80 percent. The researcher will explore the factors producing this phenomenon. Pilot research suggests that the biomedical profession may be more lucrative than previously thought. This project will reconsider the concept of prestige of the medical profession in post-socialist societies, taking into consideration the emergence of new venues for biomedical income, including work in private clinics and increased reliance on informal exchanges due to a health care crisis. The research will use the biomedical profession as a case study of the larger phenomenon of the interplay between the unfolding post-socialist transformations and dynamic gender relations and socioeconomic equity.The researcher will undertake a comparative study of the medical professionals in private and state health care facilities in the capital city of Kyiv and the peripheral city of Vinnytsia in central Ukraine. She will use a mixed-methods social science approach. She will conduct in-depth open-ended and semi-structured interviews; hold focus groups; compile life histories; have selected informants do free listing to get at cognitive models. Her study population will be female and male physicians, as well as families and friends of physicians, patients, and hospital staff. Analysis will be performed using tree diagramming and computer-assisted text analysis. The research is important because it will provide a needed, multi-faceted understanding of the feminization of the medical profession in post-socialist societies. This study has policy relevance in the realm of post-socialist reforms, restructuring of the health care sector, and promotion of gender equity. The research also will contribute to international academic reciprocity between Ukraine and the United States, and to the education of a female social scientist.