Banjul, 19th March 2025: Women are apparently gradually dominating male medical practitioners in The Gambia in terms of numbers.
According to sources from the University of The Gambia, the total number of female medical students that graduated for the past three years stand at 24 in 2021, 23 in 2022 and 16 in 2023, marking a total of 63 in various specialties in the field of medicine. The University has graduated a total number of 245 doctors since its first cohort in 2006 from the School of Medicine and Allied Sciences.
The increasing presence of women in various medical specialties such as pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, surgery and orthopedics, dermatology and many more is indeed notable. This development is changing the stereotype and misconception that the field of medicine is for only the male child while females in the science field should focus on nursing and midwifery.
However, being a medical doctor as a female in our part of the world is imaginably a daunting challenge. For an insight into this reality, we had a chat with Dr. Fatoumata Jarjusey, specialising in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital, and a wife with 13 years work experience in the medical field. While acknowledging that women like her in the country are shining examples how women can challenge the stereotype against women in medicine, she underscored the tedious experience of being married as a doctor. “Marriage is a responsibility of its own, let alone adding medical practice; “because you have to take care of your family life and the duty to save lives. You have to balance the two and make sure that the other does not suffer for the other. Sometimes our marriage life suffers because you have to wake up at night to save life but at the end of the day it is worth the struggle. Our work can be time-demanding and we sometimes work during the weekends,” Dr Jarjusey explained.
However, the challenge she affirmed does not deter them from doing their job as expected, adding that the schedule helps them to balance work and personal life. “‘We believe that women should not be stereotyped; we have seen women excelling in medicine and other fields”.
She observed that of recent, females are becoming more dominant over males in the field and in the practice, including in her department - Gynecology. She also mentioned that there are, normally females than males in the medical school of recent.
Further on the difficulties on the journey, the mother of three admitted that the work is stressful and challenging, as culturally, women are expected to do the home chores and other home activities, making it hard to study during weekends like their male counterparts. This, she said is where the inequality starts and continues even after school.
“We experience psychological and verbal discrimination. When you start working some of the senior colleagues will prefer a male junior doctor to a female in their wards because the females will get married, think of house chores and will go under a maternity leave. She will not have time like the male junior doctor will”.
She went on: “As a female doctor you have to work twice or three times harder for you to be seen amongst your male counterparts when it comes to promotion and other opportunities,” Dr Jarjusey asserted.
your male colleague might have more advantage. I remembered being discriminated against with two other ladies for being a woman, when we went for an interview to be hired as a medical doctor,I wanted to be in a certain department but the head of the unit said he is not going to hire female because they will go on a maternity leave, then I was not married but he was already projecting that because we are women and in the end they did not hire us. Regardless of everybody talking about gender equality but then there is still no equality therefore, we have a long way to go.”
She added that, “I work the whole week from 8am to 4pm and sometimes during the weekend. Generally doctors do not have closing time but fortunately, I am a senior doctor which is why I do not sleep in the hospital unless there’s an emergency that requires my attention.”
Data in 2022 shows the doctor to population ratio was 1 to 10000, which is below the WHO recommended standard.
Dr.Jabbie lamented that, “We have shortage of health care workers be it a doctor, nurse, midwifery and public health in our hospitals, I do not know the recent statistics but the previous statistics shows, the doctor to patients ratio is 1 to 10000 which is significantly low.”
In changing the stereotype, Women in Science, Technology, Engineering And Mathematics(WiSTEM) is an organization that focuses on empowering young girls in the science and related field of studies, career counseling and fostering for gender equality in these sectors.“As an executive member in WiSTEM, I take myself to be an example that these things are doable and is not like men have two heads, if they can do it and become a medical doctor you as a woman can do it better through hard work and determination. We have a lot of girls in STEM.We motivate them and of course the science field can be challenging but it is rewarding, we want them to take over in the near future” said Dr. Jabbie
“We want to tackle problems like early marriage, forceful marriage as the saying goes when you educate a woman you educate the whole nation, so we believe that early marriage, forceful marriage and women not going to school will be a thing of the past” said Dr. Jarjusey.
Research has shown that women tend to highly specialize in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics compared to men that focus highly in surgery and Orthopedics. In the Gambia, we have female consultants in these specialists as well. The likes of Dr. Mariama Joof and Dr.
Fatoumatta Jaiteh an orthopedic and trauma surgeon, who finished her studies in orthopedics presently not in the country. They all studied in the University of The Gambia, some might be out of the country for further studies and other females are attending surgery on our residential programs so therefore the number is eventually increasing.
“The salary rate in the Gambia is honestly not encouraging compared to our neighboring country Senegal and other countries but some of us choose to stay for some reason, even thoughweareamongthemostpaidjobsinthecountrywehavetotakesomeparttimejobsto burst our income. Others even left for greener pastures but if we all leave who will serve the country.”
By Isatou NG Camara
Women in Medicine: Gambian Women Bursting Myths in Realm of Medical Science
