The feminization of the health professions in Spain over the last two decades is an incontrovertible fact. Women make up around 75% of all healthcare workers, while their share of the total employed population is not even 40%. Hence the need to understand the extent of the phenomenon, the causes behind it and its implications for the future of both the health industry and the labor market as a whole.

This book examines not only the rapidly rising percentage of women professionals within the health service but also how this ongoing feminization process is changing the face of the profession itself. In effect, women healthcare workers do not mimic masculine roles, but contribute their own way of doing things.

Similar studies have been conducted, but this one differs in two significant ways: firstly, it focuses on the factors driving the feminization process and, secondly, it draws on sources that are seldom used in reference to the health sector. As such it should find interested readers among health professionals and managers, as well as the research community and public policy-makers.