CHE seminar - When Female Doctors Fly In: Access to Female Physicians and Healthcare Utilisation

Event details

Abstract

Policies addressing physician shortages typically target aggregate supply without considering that the gender composition of the local health workforce may also affect which health needs get met. I study this using a program that periodically sends a visiting female GP to rural towns where all resident doctors are male, comparing each woman's consultations with the female GP to her own consultations with local male providers. The same woman is roughly four times as likely to receive genitourinary or hormonal prescriptions when consulting the female GP, against a baseline of 6 percent, and more than ten times as likely to be screened for cervical cancer, against a baseline of 1 percent. In contrast, prescribing for non-gender-sensitive conditions and the use of routine pathology tests are unchanged. Complementary difference-in-differences estimates show that prescribing effects are concentrated among program users. Consultations with the female GP are nearly four times as likely to be long consultations, and placebo visiting male providers generate no comparable response. The pattern is consistent with women bringing gender-sensitive concerns to the female GP that they are less likely to raise with local male providers. These findings imply that physician supply and workforce gender composition are not equivalent policy levers.

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About the speaker

Martina Repetto

Martina is a final-year PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Melbourne. Martina's research lies at the intersection of health and labour economics, with a particular focus on gender differences and behavioural aspects. Martina will be on the 2026–27 Economics Job Market.