Access to Medical Technologies: Do Gender and Social Capital matter?
We explore the relationship between the characteristics of social capital, the speed of access to medical technologies and the role of gender in a private practice context. Our findings from a sample of 98 German private practitioners show that: (a) being a woman has an overall negative impact on the speed of access to medical technologies; (b) private practitioners with strong social network ties obtain quicker access to medical technologies than do those with weak ties; (c) men relying on their weak ties perform better than women who do so. In contrast, we observe that women relying on strong ties outperform their male counterparts in terms of speed of access to medical technologies.