Elsevier

Dental Abstracts

Volume 62, Issue 5, September–October 2017, Pages 265-266
Dental Abstracts

The Big Picture
Gender differences in hours worked

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Background

Soon women will outnumber men in dental schools throughout the United States. The impact of this “feminization” of dentistry is expected to be felt in terms of clinician practice patterns and patient outcomes. Various studies have been done to explore these possible changes, but it appears that despite differences in the total days worked and patients treated, the rates of productivity for male and female dentists are similar. Women tend to work fewer hours a week and are more likely to choose

Methods

The data on dentists’ working hours were taken from the American Dental Association (ADA) Health Policy Institute’s Survey of Dental Practice. They indicated that 90.4% of active dentists in the United States are in private practice. The data on gender composition of the dentist workforce was obtained from the ADA masterfile, a database of all dentists, practicing and non-practicing, in the United States. Its archived datasets from 2001 through 2015 were accessed to obtain historical

Results

The percent of practicing dentists who were female increased from 16.0% in 2001 to 28.9% in 2015 throughout the United States. California had a higher share of female dentists, with 33.4% of practicing dentists being female in 2015.

The average hours worked per year for California dentists was 1624 for women and 1705 for men during 2000-2004, a difference of 4.8%. For 2010-2014, both male and female dentists in California worked fewer hours, but female dentists worked 10.1% fewer hours than male

Discussion

Although women in dentistry tend to work fewer hours than their male counterparts, the gender gap in hours worked varies over time and eventually disappears. If female dentists in California were to work the same number of hours as male dentists in their age group, the aggregate number of hours worked would be 3.6% higher.

The policy implications include the following:

  • With more women becoming dentists, it’s important to understand gender differences in the labor supply and how it can affect the

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Vujicic M, Munson B, Harrison B: Does California project the future of dentistry? CDA J 45:31-34, 2017

Reprints available from B Harrison; e-mail: [email protected]

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