TORONTO—It’s no surprise that women dominate health-care occupations in Canada, but a new study attaches some numbers to the situation.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information said women make up about 80 percent of the health-care workforce.

Women continue to dominate in nursing, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy—and their ranks are increasing in male-dominated health-care professions.
Last year, the CIHI said 56 percent of family doctors under age 40 were women while in the 60-and-over group, only 15 percent of family doctors were women.
And 64 percent of pharmacists under 40 last year were women.
Francine Anne Roy, director of health resources information at the CIHI, said it’s important to understand the workforce to plan for the future of health care in Canada.
Another institute manager, Deborah Cohen, said female occupational therapists and physiotherapists work fewer hours in their 30s and 40s compared to men, so it’s important to recognize this for planning purposes.
There are more than one million people working in health-care occupations in Canada, the CIHI noted.
Its findings are contained in a series of reports released yesterday, with details on supply, distribution, migration, education, demographic trends, and work patterns for seven occupations.
The reports found that doctors and physiotherapists had the highest percentage of internationally-trained professionals. Twenty-two percent of doctors and 15 percent of physiotherapists had international training.
For the six occupations that were studied, internationally-trained workers were most likely to have been educated in the United Kingdom, the United States, India, the Philippines, South Africa, Ireland, and Hong Kong.