If I do agree to see a female, she must be supervised by a male chaperone – which females are inexplicably offended by despite the fact that their male colleagues are legally required to have female chaperones. I ask for male doctors in all cases, even for Band-aids or stitches, and definitely for intimate exams. I’m not going to deny that there is an underlying tone of sexism here. And for change to happen, we all need to work together and keep moving forward to decrease gender bias everywhere. CEOs, business owners, lawyers, pharmacists, the list goes on and on – many women deal with this. And it is not just the physicians that deal with this. Since that fateful day in the elevator with my husband, I have been mistaken for a profession other than a doctor a few more times. You worked hard for many, many years and sacrificed enormously so don’t be afraid to boast about your success. So ladies, be proud of your accomplishments and brag away. This is due to many factors including the societal norm that a woman should remain modest and less boastful than her male counterparts. It’s also been well documented that women try to speak less about all their personal achievements then men do. It’s clear that women need to be hired into much more administrative and leadership roles. One study in 2015 found that women accounted for only 13.9% of department chairs across nine major clinical specialties. In 2014, the Association of American Medical Colleges found that although the number of medical students and residents are evenly divided, females only make up 38% of faculty, 21% of full professors, and only 16% of deans. Unfortunately, it’s going to take more than just outnumbering men in the medical field. In addition, the increase in the number of female physicians since 2012 is twice that of male physicians (11% and 5%, respectively). There is some hope for the physician gender bias to turn: new enrollment in medical school in 2016 was evenly divided between women (49.8 percent) and men (50.2 percent). But we can change the odds and continue to reverse assumed traditional gender roles. Obviously, we can’t change what we wear to work or how we look. What can we do about the overwhelming gender bias? I was chatting with an all-female group of fellow medical students on the patio when our classmate’s mother approached us and asked, “So are you the girlfriends or wives?” My feminist friend firmly told her we were going to be doctors just like her son. According to my husband, my mother-in-law has always believed that a woman’s role is to stay home, take care of the children, and have dinner ready on the table once her husband got home.Ī similar instance occurred during the week of orientation for medical school when one of our classmates had a party in his large backyard. She immediately said, “Oh, like a nurse?” My husband’s father corrected her immediately. When I first met my now-husband’s mother, he introduced me as “This is Karen. She told me that he assumed she wasn’t a doctor because she was “too pretty to be a doctor”.ĭoes it stem from an older generation’s “traditional” female and male roles? One friend was once at the park with her husband and stepson and a man asked her if she was a nurse. I asked my friends if they also experienced this too. He laughed and said, “You doctors just get younger and younger, I swear!” Granted, I can look about 16 years old at times. I asked him, “Why didn’t you assume I was a doctor?” He had just presumed I was because I looked young. I was wearing dress clothes and my white coat when a stranger walking the other way asked me if I was a nurse. I once walked outside the hospital to cross the small street to get to the clinic side. in 2014, 66% were male and 32% were female. Of the 916,000 physicians with an active license in the U.S. The US Census Bureau reported in 2013 that there were 3.5 million employed nurses in 2011, about 3.2 million of whom were female and 330,000 male. He said that since there a larger number of female nurses and a larger number of male doctors that his odds of landing my profession was greater. One of the young workers behind the counter immediately asked, “Are you a nurse?” I asked him why he didn’t assume I was a doctor instead and he responded that it was easier to assume someone was a nurse rather than start at a doctor. I once wore monogrammed scrubs to pick up dinner at a burger joint once. But still, male physicians wear scrubs all the time and get mistaken far less for a nurse. By nature of diagnostic radiology, we are often in office attire and are introduced by the technologist as the doctor as soon as we meet the patient. Admittedly, this has happened a lot less since I’m a radiologist now ( the only medical specialty where women on average make more money than men!). When I was an OB/GYN, we wore the same scrubs as the nurses, so I could see why the patients assumed I was also a nurse.
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