Surgical salary or family life? Studies show many women do not advance to specialised medical training in rates comparable to those of men.
While women now constitute the
majority of Kenya’s health workers, that lead evaporates as you move to degree
and post-graduate levels.
Specifically, elite medical
fields like surgery and dentistry remain male-dominated, revealing a persistent
gender imbalance in the country’s healthcare workforce.
According to the 2025 EconomicSurvey, women accounted for 67.2 per cent of graduates from the Kenya Medical
Training College (KMTC) in 2023/24, a significant increase from 63 per cent in
2019/20. KMTC offers diploma and
certificate courses.
This surge is most evident in
nursing and community health programmes, where female enrolment has soared.
However, this female majority
evaporates as you move to the upper echelons of medical training.
Out of 14 health sciences degree
programmes last year, female graduates were a majority in just five.
“The total number of graduates
and post-graduates declined by 5.4 per cent to 5,501 in 2024/25, with the
number of males and females being 2,752 and 2,749, respectively,” the Economic
survey said.
Women led in Bachelor of Science
in Nursing (812 male, 911female); Medical laboratory sciences (146 male, 166
women); nutrition and dietetics (96 male, 146 female); and physiotherapy (61
male, 70 female).
For the first time since 2020,
women were also the majority of graduates of Bachelor of Pharmacy with 165 of them
graduating compared to 105 men.
This lead drops in elite degrees
such as dentistry where women were 40 per cent of the graduates last year. This
dipped much lower in medicine and surgery at about 33 per cent.
In surgical specialties at
post-graduate level, women comprise only about nine per cent of the workforce,
a figure that has remained stagnant since 2015.
This disconnect between general
medical training and specialised fields shows that early promise for women is
not translating into elite roles.
The disparity is even more
pronounced in fields like neurosurgery where, as of 2015, Dr. Susan Karanja
became only the second female neurosurgeon in Kenya.
By 2022, out of 39 qualified
neurosurgeons in Kenya and 40 in training, only six women were practising with
one in training, according to Dr Trizah John, one of Kenya’s female
neurosurgeons.
Studies have identified several
factors contributing to this imbalance. Male medical students are more likely
to choose surgical careers, often citing the prestige and intellectual
challenge associated with the field. In contrast, female students tend to
prefer specialties like paediatrics, influenced by considerations such as
work-life balance and family responsibilities.
“Despite the advancement made
globally and locally, female neurosurgeons are still faced with some challenges
that contribute to low recruitment and retention,” Dr Trizah says in an article
Women Neurosurgeons In Kenya.
She adds: “The challenges of
finding a balance between personal and professional demands since women are
faced with additional responsibilities like child-bearing and family-rearing.
In addition, mentorship and guidance opportunities tend to be limited.”
Kenya’s gender gap within elite
medical fields mirrors international trends. A global study of cardiac surgeons
– “Women in cardiac surgery: a global workforce analysis”, published in the Cardio Thoracic Surgery journal last year – revealed that women make up just
eight per cent of cardiac surgeons worldwide.
This number climbs to about 11 per cent in
North America and 9.9 per cent in upper-middle-income countries, but drops to
under three per cent in East Asia and under two per cent in the Middle East and
North Africa. In Kenya, the trend in high-end specialties is similarly slow-moving.
There is growing evidence that
increasing diversity in surgery is not just fair – it saves lives. A recent
University of Toronto study analysing more than 700,000 operations across
Canada found that teams with at least 35 per cent women in clinical leadership
roles had a three per cent reduction in major post-operative complications
compared to more male-dominated teams. The findings were published in the British Journal of Surgery.
As study lead Dr Julie Hallet
said, “Care was associated with better postoperative outcomes…increasing
operating room teams’ sex diversity is not a question of representation or
social justice, but an important part of optimising performance”
Why Women Don’t Stick Around
Elite Paths
Experts say several barriers are
at play. Surgical training is notoriously gruelling and inflexible, making it
difficult to pursue while balancing societal expectations and family planning.
Most departments lack female
mentors and role models. Globally, women occupy only around 25 per cent of senior
healthcare leadership positions, despite making up nearly 70 per cent of the
overall workforce . In Kenya, no Level 6 hospital is currently headed by a
woman.
In the last ten years, two female
Cabinet Secretaries (Sicily Kariuki and Deborah Barasa) were hounded out of
office and transferred to ‘less demanding’ ministries while one (Susan
Nakhumicha) was sacked.
One Kenyan female surgical
trainee, who asked not to be named, shared her experience: “Even at university,
some faculty asked whether I ‘had what it takes.’ Later, during rotations, I
was often mistaken for a nurse or assistant. That can feel discouraging.”
Institutions like the Council of
Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa (Cosecsa) and Women in Surgery
Africa are already offering scholarships and mentorship as pathways to
encourage women in surgical residency.
“Women can only start to
penetrate the surgical workforce once they are safe, healthy, and motivated
enough to do so, in turn depending on the presence of female surgeons to advocate
for their female patients and empower future generations of young girls and
women,” say Isabella Busa and Shobhana Nagraj of Oxford University.
Dr Triza John says increasing the
number of female neurosurgeons in Kenya will not only expand the number of
women in neurosurgery but more importantly increase the number of the Kenyan
population that has access to neurosurgeons.
“This will eventually lead to the
improvement of the quality and access to neurosurgical care in the country and
the region,” she says.