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

研究生Maryna Y. Bazylevych将在Gail Landsman博士的指导下，调查乌克兰从事生物医学专业的女性人数不断增加背后的因素。随着社会经济转型在后社会主义乌克兰展开，许多以前女性化的社会经济地位相对较高的职业正在成为男性的领域。与这种典型模式相反，乌克兰执业女医生的比例正在稳步增长，目前接近80%。研究者将探究产生这种现象的因素。初步研究表明，生物医学职业可能比以前想象的更有利可图。该项目将重新考虑后社会主义社会中医疗职业声望的概念，考虑到生物医学收入新场所的出现，包括在私人诊所工作，以及由于保健危机而增加对非正式交流的依赖。这项研究将利用生物医学专业作为一个案例，研究正在展开的后社会主义转型与动态性别关系和社会经济平等之间相互作用的更大现象。研究人员将对首都基辅和乌克兰中部外围城市文尼察的私人和国家卫生保健机构的医疗专业人员进行比较研究。她将使用混合方法的社会科学方法。她将进行深入的开放式和半结构化访谈；举办焦点小组；编写生活史；让选定的信息者做免费列表来获得认知模型。她的研究人群将是女性和男性医生，以及医生、患者和医院工作人员的家人和朋友。分析将使用树形图和计算机辅助文本分析进行。这项研究很重要，因为它将为后社会主义社会医疗行业的女性化提供必要的、多方面的理解。这项研究在社会主义后的改革、保健部门的改组和促进性别平等领域具有政策相关性。这项研究还将有助于乌克兰和美国之间的国际学术互惠，并有助于培养一名女性社会科学家。

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.