Gender and International Medical Graduates: Historical, Contemporary and Intersectional Perspectives

The previous chapter has uncovered the nature of the two-tier system in medical employment determined by place of qualification. In this chapter we seek to understand the effects of introducing what Crenshaw (1991) calls an intersectional sensibility which leads to more complex picture than the binary one presented so far. Crenshaw points to structural intersectionality where the location of women of colour at the intersection of race and gender makes their experiences qualitatively different from those of white women. Moreover, Crenshaw argues that an intersectional sensibility should be a central theoretical and political objective of antiracism and feminism (Crenshaw, 1991: 1243). An intersectional sensibility has informed Healy et al.’s study on inequality regimes in the public sector (2011). Whereas Brah and Phoenix argue that intersectionality signifies the complex, irreducible, varied and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation intersect in historically specific contexts (2004: 76). Much work on gender has tended to focus on women and the way that the gender order ensures that women’s careers and their experiences of the workplace are defined by male work patterns (e.g. Acker, 1990; Collinson et al. 1990;Crompton and Sanderson, 1990; Halford et al. 1997; Walby, 1997; Bradley and Healy, 2008).