Gender and clinical pharmacy: The career of an occupational ideology

This paper explores the idea that in a changing profession, women are the p rincipal value carriers of clinical pharmacy-an occupational ideology profe ssedly developed to restore pharmacy's precarious standing in the occupatio nal hierarchy. While the investigation uncovers considerable evidence for t he vitality of clinical pharmacy beliefs among practitioners, women were no t at the forefront of this trend. Neither general gender socialization nor specific pharmacy training has rendered females more sympathetic to clinica l pharmacy than males. Differences within the pharmacy community regarding clinical pharmacy-and they are quite considerable-emanate from the varied w ork settings that practitioners occupy and their year of licensure. Attitud es to clinical pharmacy are better predicted by workplace than by gender. O n the basis of our findings, it seems unlikely that balancing the number of men and women in an occupation or work organization will, in and of itself , change it. Whatever distinctive prior orientations to work that female ph armacists may hold, they have little impact upon how they think about clini cal pharmacy.