In the last century, community pharmacy has undergone a transformation. Technology advancements and structural changes allowed pharmacy to move from an industry once dominated by independent pharmacies to larger, retail chains across the country. 

This allowed pharmacy as a career to become more family friendly and more accessible to women. 

Pharmacy has become a female-majority profession that is highly remunerated with a small gender earning gap and a low earnings dispersion compared to other professions. The increase in female earnings against male earnings was a major factor in the industry becoming more female-centric. 

Women are leading when it comes to the majority of working pharmacists in the country and generally worldwide. But there is still a serious lack of women with higher positions in the industry. Men tend to be in more managerial positions and supervising pharmacist positions despite being in the gender minority. Why is this? 

“I didn’t notice a gender difference when I was in university to be honest” says Fadia Alshareefy, a fully qualified pharmacist and PHD student. 

“It was only when I entered the workplace I realised that there are more women”. 

Alshareefy notes her frustration in the fact that men tend to occupy the more senior positions when the women are the majority. She explains that in the pharmacy she works for, there are six full-time pharmacists. One third of this number are men, and the rest are women. The two men currently occupy managerial positions within the pharmacy. 

This is a real life example of the current gender statistic gathered about newly registered pharmacists since the beginning of 2020. It reflects the fact that of all pharmacists registered over the last two years one third are men while two thirds are women. 

“Most of my male friends from college don’t even work in a patient-facing pharmacy role. The majority were headhunted into large pharmaceutical companies and some don’t use their pharmacy degree in their new roles. It’s women who tend to go straight into community pharmacy roles and stay there”. 

If women aren’t getting senior positions as much as their peers, why has it remained a female centric profession? 

The pharmacist profession became feminized as the “career cost” of working low hours and part-time in pharmacy decreased. The hourly earnings penalty to part-time work in pharmacy has virtually disappeared during the past four decades whereas it has remained about the same for other college graduates. There is virtually no gender pay gap in pharmacy. 

With staff pharmacist positions readily available, women could leave the profession during their childbearing years and return to work part-time. Retail and chain pharmacies have also made working hours more accessible to women with children. 

It is often suggested that men, being more likely to choose pharmacy for its entrepreneurial opportunities, became more reluctant to enter pharmacy as prospects for ownership declined with chain pharmacies. As men have left the patient-facing side of the profession, women have stepped in to fill the gap. 

“Women are less often included in mentoring and networking relationships,” claims Alshareefy. “These play an important role in career advancement.”

Women who choose to temporarily leave the profession or reduce their hours often must do so at the expense of career development. 

Despite this, women are still the leading majority when it comes to new registrants and graduates across the world. But with the pharmacists shortage currently happening across the country will the career begin to shift to a more male-orientated career? Time will tell.