Visions

Changing
Landscape
“Men - their rights
and nothing more;
Women - their rights
and nothing less.”
Susan B. Anthony
HR IQ
Women and
Women’s Rights
in Dentistry
Rebecca Crane & coauthor Tim Twigg
Susan B. Anthony was a primary organizer, speaker, and writer for the 19th
century women’s rights movement, especially the first phases of the long
struggle for voter rights of women (i.e. the women’s suffrage movement).
Women won their right to vote in 1920, but it didn’t stop there. More than
just the right to vote, women are now afforded rights and protections in the
workplace that affect all employers (both men and women) every day.
Nowhere is this continuing and ongoing shift more prevalent today than
in dentistry. In the U.S., 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.
While the majority of the employees in the dental field have always been
female (dental assistants, hygienists, and office managers), today, it is
estimated that one third of practicing dentists are female. And dental school
enrollment is now approaching a ratio of 50% male and 50% female. It
clearly is not an exclusively male industry anymore.
Most of us applaud the progress, and it requires employers to “elevate their
game” with understanding the responsibilities inherent with women’s rights
and the protections afforded them under various federal and state laws.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
It’s possible that no other law has had a greater impact on protections
for individuals, including women, than Title VII. This federal law makes
it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of race, color,
religion, national origin, or sex/gender. It is also illegal to retaliate against
a person because the person complained about discrimination, filed a
charge of discrimination, or participated in an employment discrimination
investigation or lawsuit.
Making it illegal to discriminate based on sex meant that women could no
longer be discriminated against simply because they were a woman. They
had a right to apply and get hired for the same job that a man would. This
also meant that employers had to refrain from saying and doing some of the
things they might have before the law went into effect, much of which was
related to the recruiting process.
LVI VISIONS | Winter 2013 | 87