The table illustrates the number of doctors in Australia, while the bar chart shows data on the proportion of doctors in this country by gender and place of birth in the years 1986, 1996 and 2006.
Overall, the number of doctors living in Australia increased year by year. The proportion of male doctors decreased gradually, with recording consistently higher figures, while the reverse was true for female counterparts. Moreover, despite rising slightly, doctors born outside Australia exhibited the same percentages with that of doctors who are native to this country at the end of the period, whose proportion was consistently higher throughout.
Looking at the table first, starting at 23,720, the figure for doctors in Australia saw marked growth to 29,060 in 1996, and this was followed by a further increase to 35,450 in 2006.
Turning to the details of gender, male doctors accounted for approximately 75% initially, but this figure steadily declined to exactly 60% by 2006. However, female doctors showed a different picture. The proportion, making up nearly 25% at the beginning, started to grow gradually, reaching 40% by 2006. The figure for males and females had a difference of twenty-percentage points at the end of the period, with the former making up 60%, whereas the latter composed 40%.
Moving towards information regarding place of birth, percentage of doctors born overseas constituted approximately 40%, which was lower than that of Australian doctors by twenty-percentage point gap. After two decades this disparity became less pronounced, with both gender’s percentages reaching parity at exactly 50%.