Only one in every one hundred working within dental care is male

The gender gap is still high in certain areas of health education. Within dental care, there is only one man among every one hundred students.

Researcher, Mari Teigen, told Aftenposten newspaper that she’s surprised that the percentage of men is so low in dental hygiene, as dental secretaries, and health secretaries.

‘That’s extreme numbers. From old times, in such professions there was often a relationship between a male dentist,and a female ‘subordinate’.

At the top it has changed, but apparently the same hasn’t happened in the secretary positions’, said Teigen, Head of Core, the community for gender equality research.
She believes a combination of status and pay are the explanation, indicating that women more often accept inferior terms of pay and working hours.

The newspaper summarised the percentage of men in several professions. At the bottom, after dental care, hairdressers and skincare showed 5 out of 100 were men. Then followed cleaners, with 11, libraries with 15, and psychologists and
elementary school teachers with 25 out of 100.

At the top of the professional list was diving where 100% were men. Just behind were carpenter with 98%, window cleaners with 96%, taxi drivers with 92%, and IT managers with 89%.

In the middle of the list were physicians, and store managers, with a gender distribution of 50%.

©  NTB Scanpix / Norway Today