Widening Participation in UK Medicine Seminar
The Work, Employment, and HRM Research Community welcomes Dr Louise Ashley of Queen Mary University of London.
Dr Ashley will present her research on "The Golden Ticket? Widening Participation in UK Medicine and the Making of an Emotional Proletariat," exploring the socio-economic dynamics within the medical profession and the impact of social mobility on career trajectories and professional stratification.
Research abstract
The ‘Widening Participation’ agenda has sought to open access to the UK medical profession, including on the basis of socio-economic background (SEB), motivated in part as doctors from less advantaged backgrounds are more likely to take-up roles in shortage areas and locations. Within the profession, these patterns have been welcomed as a means to improve service delivery but the cause of differential outcomes has been overlooked, as has the potential for social stratification to have less positive effects. Based on in-depth interviews (n=54) with medical students, doctors and educators (N=38), and using core concepts provided by Bourdieu, this article takes up these themes, focusing particularly on how values influence the direction of careers. This reveals that doctors from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds often particularly value the provision of empathetic and compassionate care yet believe these traits are less valuable to secure more competitive careers and may even signal lower skill. This mismatch highlights a related tension: namely, that while doctors from less advantaged backgrounds perform an important role, they are also at risk of becoming the profession’s ‘emotional proletariat,’ with higher representation in roles that do not enjoy the most status or respect. The article ends by discussing related consequences for patients, for practitioners, and for the future of the medical profession, in the context of worsening working conditions, significant change, and multiple conflicts.
About the speaker
Dr Louise Ashley is an Associate Professor at Queen Mary University of London and her research focuses on equality, diversity and inclusion in ‘elite’ professions and occupations, with a particular focus on social mobility and socio-economic diversity.
She is the author of the book Highly Discriminating: Why the City isn’t Fair and Diversity Doesn’t Work (Bristol University Press, 2022), alongside publications in journals including Work, Employment and Society and Human Relations.