Is there a need? Indeed!!!

The Second Women’s Weekend
Dental Conference was, by all accounts, and
yes, I was there to experience it first-hand, a roaring success.
Held in
June at the White Oaks Conference Resort & Spa in Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON, attendees were wined, dined and educated by the best. The cherry on the sundae was the 12 CE credits provided dentists and their staff.

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Presenters
included:

Dr. Daniele
Larose on
advanced anterior composites;

Susan Shulist
on building a
better professional practice;

Veronica Hubatsch
on
marketing a practice for continued success;

Dr. Paulette
Pillersdorf on
‘yoga sutra’ (a demonstration from which I have yet to untangle, but
that’s
just me);

Dr. Lori Trost on making
a great first ‘impression’; and

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Kary Odiatu on
reviving,refreshing and renewing to live your best life.

Oral
Health
had the honour of co-sponsoring the event along with Clinical Research
Dental,Pow Laboratories and Scotiabank.

I’ve been asked if
there is a
need for a ‘women’s dental
conference? I ask, in turn, why has an obvious need previously not been
met?

There is a wave of
women dentists
surging through the corridors of dental schools. In North America, prior to the early 1970’s, dentists were
almost
exclusively male. The U.S. had the lowest
percentage of women dentists in the Western World: roughly half of the dentists
in Greece were women, about one-third in France, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and almost four-fifths in Russia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania, according to spiritofcaring.com.

The number of women
in
dentistry is increasing significantly and this gender shift is having a
dramatic impact on the practice of dentistry.

Are
women
naturally better at creating relationships, especially Dr/patient
relationships, or do they have the same challenges as men do in creating
these
relationships?

Are
there unique
challenges that women dentists face?

What
impact will
women have when they are the majority or near majority of dentists? Will
creative
solutions be developed to address the unique demands of being a woman
dentist?

In Canada,
women earn an average of 72 cents for every dollar that a man earns.
Female-dominated professions in general are valued much lower than
male-dominated
professions. Childcare workers are paid on par with parking lot
attendants,
plumbers earn more than nurses. Men outnumber women in each of the ten
highest
paid occupations in Canada
while women outnumber men in all but one of the ten lowest paid
occupations. In
both the highest and lowest paid occupations in Canada,
women in these occupations earn less than men in the same occupation.
For
example, female food and beverage servers earn 76% of what male servers
earn
while female dentists earn 66% of what male dentists earn. (http://www.unpac.ca/economy/paidwork.html)