PARVEEN KUMAR

Young women's… attitude towards professions has changed hugely during my career. Now, it's the norm for women to enter professions. When I was a medical student there were very few girls and you were regarded as perhaps not as good as the men. So you just strove harder and you got to the top.

If you asked my family, they'd say that my work/life balance was badly organised – I was always working. I don't think I had it right. Family was always very important to me but if I had a really ill patient, I would be there whatever, as I knew they would understand.

The thing was that I wanted to make sure I was being a good housewife at the same time. I look back now and think, how can you be so stupid! I nearly killed myself trying to do all that until I finally caved in and got a cleaner. I now tell youngsters, "Just do the things you're good at and leave the chores to other people so you can have more time with your family and still have a good job."

Is medicine becoming too feminised? I think the answer is yes... There is no doubt that men tend to push a lot more while women tend to resolve conflict by listening, which doesn't really help the profession in terms of getting what we want. I think, though, that women are starting to learn to be more forward and push their point of view.

I hate it if I ever have to take a vote on a committee because that means you've failed – you haven't managed to get everyone on board during the discussion. I've sat on and chaired a lot of committees and I've found that women are more capable, generally, of diffusing conflict. I'm sure men might disagree!