Female GPs make up just 16–19 per cent of the workforce in traditional south Wales mining communities such as Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent.
In Scotland, 42 per cent of GPs are women and they make up 40 per cent of the workforce in England. In Northern Ireland, 36 per cent of GPs are female.
Overall, there are only 35 per cent of women GPs in the Welsh workforce.
Of the 157 women who have swelled GP numbers in Wales since 1998, the majority are between 45 and 54 years old.
Numbers of young women GPs have stayed almost static, with only a handful of women under 30 working in the country.
This is generally bad news, because the average age at which women leave general practice in Wales is 45, an age that has remained relatively static since 1998.
In 2005, only just over half the registrars in Wales were women, which was a fall from two-thirds the year before.
But out of GPs starting work in Wales for the first time last year, 64 per cent were women.
