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Background: Women GPs experience higher rates of burnout, anxiety, depression, and slower career progression than men GPs. Women GPs are sought out by patients for specific conditions, which may increase consultation length. This can be a source of job satisfaction for some. However it can also contribute to additional exhaustion and affects career progression, meaning women GPs are at higher risk of leaving the profession. There is an urgent need to identify solutions to retain and support them. Aim: This review brings together a wide range of evidence to identify the conditions in which women GPs can thrive, to better support them at work. Design and setting: An international realist review of academic and grey literature across eight databases and Google Scholar. Method: Following a realist approach, supported by stakeholder and patient involvement, a range of published documents were analysed using a realist logic to identify how, why, for whom and in what circumstances women GPs thrive at work. Results: A total of 72 documents are included in this review. Sixteen configurations describe the conditions in which women GPs can thrive. Results cover three concepts: ‘Patient-facing work’; ‘Navigating competing roles’; and ‘Sustainable careers, leadership and success’. However, literature also places heavy reliance on encouraging women GPs to ‘fix’ their own circumstances. Conclusion: This review provides evidence-based recommendations which may be of interest to those responsible for organisational culture within general practices, including (but not limited to) GP partners, and women GPs, who can utilise the recommendations to influence change.

Balancing professional and personal care responsibilities is a longstanding challenge in clinical practice. The pressure of this is acutely felt across primary care because of rising patient demand and overextended clinical hours. Given that over half of general practitioners are now women,1 the conflict between clinical availability and childcare needs is no longer a peripheral issue, but a core challenge to workforce retention. The recent suspension of the GP Helen Eisenhauser for unauthorised “ringfencing” of appointments because of childcare pressures has underscored these growing systemic tensions.2

Drawing on interview and diary data from twenty-one women in the UK, this paper focuses on how endometriosis, a long-term gynaecological condition, is lived and navigated alongside paid employment. It discusses the intersectional dynamics of gender, disability, race and ethnicity to explore how certain bodies are precarized across space and time by the rigid temporal organization of work. We advance existing discussions of precarity by showing how, in the absence of supportive interventions, the embodied precarity of a widely misunderstood and gendered condition with highly variable symptoms can paradoxically make precarious work more suitable because of its purported flexibility. But this creates a double bind of its own, given the well-documented insecurity and lack of clear employment rights which characterizes such work. Theoretically, we develop the concept of endo time as a non-normative temporality located within crip time to highlight its radical divergence from normative ableist and androcentric time and neoliberal labour logic for those working with endometriosis. Endo time advances feminist theorizing of precarity by shedding additional light on bodies at and not at work, those which can and cannot work regularly and consistently; long-term gendered health conditions; and the discursive representation of women’s bodies as leaky, unpredictable and fragile.

In June, the Medical Women’s Federation released their Manifesto for Women Doctors. Across seven key themes, the manifesto details concrete actions for individuals, organisations and the government to help retain women doctors (1). Written after the Spring 2025 conference, this document is a flare, a distress signal sent to draw attention to a group known to be at risk of higher rates of burnout, poorer wellbeing outcomes, the ‘glass ceiling’ effect at senior leadership levels and increased patient demand in certain areas (child and women’s health) (2). Never has this manifesto come at a more important time, as we await the release of the NHS Ten Year Plan.