title: The gender imbalance among speech and language therapists and students.
abstract: Speech and language therapy is still a predominantly female profession. This paper reports the numbers and percentages of males among the population of student speech and language therapists in the UK in 1999-2000. The numbers imply that there is no prospect of redressing the gender imbalance in the near future. Information was gathered by means of a questionnaire to male speech and language therapy students and male therapists on the reasons for their career choice and their occupation-related experience concerning their gender. Most therapists reported advantages from their gender but a minority reported difficulties arising from being a man in the speech and language therapy profession. The issue of working alone with children is identified as being in urgent need of resolution.
authors.affiliation: Speech and Language Therapy Department, Lever Chambers Centre for Health, Ashburner Street, Bolton.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Boyd
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hewlett
mesh_terms: D002321:Career Choice; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012606:Scotland; D017678:Sex Distribution; D013066:Speech-Language Pathology / Q000639:trends; D013336:Students, Health Occupations / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000078329:Workforce