I read a statistic recently that healthcare workers in the United States and around the world is something like 70-80% women. Thus, to be a healthcare architect is to build for the female voice (mostly). In retrospect, my trouble in medical school may have been my inability to work effectively with my fellow female workers. There was a disconnect that perhaps stemmed from my college experience. Many women think about marriage, something I don’t necessarily think about or ascribe tremendous value to (though it’s by no means unimportant). I also felt WashU, as an institution, was female-dominated, and the statistics confirm that to an extent. The student body is female-majority. Perhaps that’s why there was such warmth at the institution, almost like having a metaphorical girlfriend and not needing another one. Maybe men get girlfriends only out of necessity; I don’t really know. I’ve never really had a close girl friend—romantic or platonic. I guess I never needed one.
In my architecture class, it’s probably 50% women. I’ve read that as we progress in the profession, it becomes more male-dominated. I suppose biomedical engineering is similar. It’s interesting because I’ve never quite worked closely with a female colleague before. Or maybe I have, and it didn’t work out. I think women, on average, approach work with a certain strictness and rule-following that I don’t really believe in myself: that’s partly why I decided to move toward the arts as well. It’s difficult to cheat in the arts. In medicine, there were a lot of protocols to follow, and while this may be a generalization, I think women, on average, tend to be just a bit better at following rules, spoken and unspoken, and so when you have a profession that’s extremely female-dominated, a traditionally masculine approach may fail, as it did in my case.
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