Very eyeopening article-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/niamey-wilson/the-secret-world-of-women-surgeons_b_8110786.html
Maybe if you’re the mother of a male in medicine, but the complaints and issues expressed by the author—are all things I have heard first hand from my both daughters, starting from their very first clinic rotation during MS1.
D1 is currently in residency in a male-dominated specialty. She said she thought she was prepared for the gender discrimination because she had been a physics major in college (female physics majors are even rarer than female surgeons) and had lived with needing to be ‘one of the boys’ for years before she ever entered med school. Still it stung when several of her [male] residency interviewers noted she was undergrad physics major, and made sexist remarks about it. (“Gee, you don’t look like a physics major” or “You’re way too pretty to have studied physics” – carrying the implication that she’s lying about her background. Her actual response was professional & appropriate but what she really wanted to say was “Is it because I have breasts?”)
Just in the past few months, patients have called her a nurse, a scribe, an aide, a tech, a phlebotomist, social worker–everything imaginable except physician-- even after she’s introduced herself as “Doctor D1”, performed a physical exam on them, made a diagnosis and written orders for tests and medications. She’s then routinely asked “When is the doctor going to come examine me?” If she and her PA (who is male) enter the room together, even though she introduces herself as “Doctor D1” and her PA as “Joe”, it’s always presumed she’s a nurse. It’s always her PA gets addressed as “Doctor Joe” even though he’s 6 years younger than she is. This true with both male and female patients.
Among her year co-residents, all the men are married; all the women are single. And the women aren’t single by choice, but because they don’t have the time or energy to perform the typically “female” (nurturing, supportive, caretaking) role in a relationship. (Also a lot of men are intimidated by a potential spouse who will substantially out-earn them.)
I remember the gender discrimination I dealt with in the 70’s and 80’s in high school/college/ grad school/my early career and had hoped things would be better for my daughters. I find it very discouraging that, in many ways, nothing has changed.
These attitudes are dying out with the increasingly older people that carry them. Except maybe in Texas.
Ouch - I have never thought of the issues that female surgeons must face. 
Smart women are hot.
You’d think they’d have crowds of interested men around them.
These attitudes aren’t dying out. Her interviewers weren’t all older males; some who made sexist remarks were in their 40’s.
The patients who don’t acknowledge her as a physician are of all ages–including teenagers and 20-somethings as well grandfather/grandmother-types.
BTW, her residency is at a brand name New England academic center. She’s not anywhere near Texas.
(In fact most of more blatantly sexist comments she got were at schools in the NE and upper Midwest.)
If you are in your mid-40’s, you were born in 1970 or before and it’s likely you spent your formative years steeped in tradition. People interviewing in the NE could have come from anywhere there were pockets of resistance even after that.
As someone who has watched this since 1980, I can tell you that it has gotten much, much better. Back then, some residency programs were just beginning to get exposed. They had decades of success with only men in the program and they didn’t want to change, but they knew they had to interview women and the results were sometimes amusing. Obnoxious but amusing.
Sometimes the problem is just about how old/young newly minted docs appear, regardless of gender. Everyone can fall prey to that, especially oldsters who think you look like their grandson/daughter.
D. is a first year resident in Prelim program. She said that she loves everybody on her floor (when in hospital shifts) and has a great relationship with attending (male) . He actually knew about D. from his wife. The only negative experience so far has been with the female doctor and there is nothing about any kind of remarks, just accountability issue . Starting with next year, D. will be in her specialty, it is somewhat female dominated field.
OK, one specialty that D. did not care about because of social environment was surgery. It did not have to do with gender at all, but D. believed that social environment could be improved substantially there.
Out of 3 programs that D. was interviewed in NE, she liked only one. She did not feel that she was fitting socially in 2 others, but was ready to go anywhere. She felt that it had to do with her being from Midwest, and had nothing to do with her gender. The only person who did not match in D’s specialty was male. If D. ever accounted the “gender” problem, she did not mentioned it to me, which tells me that she probably did not have any as she usually let me know and more so about social type of issues.
Good article. I sent this to my daughter, who just started med school, because surgery is what she has always said she wants to do. That may change over the next few years.
My mom is a nurse who worked for a father-daughter surgical practice. When the daughter began her residency, probably about 25-30 years ago, she was the only female. The coffee pot was kept where the male residents changed. She got tired of asking someone to get her a cup of coffee, so she walked in a few times to get her own coffee, catching a few men mid-change. They promptly moved the coffee pot to a neutral location. A funny story, but sad to hear that women in medicine are still battling more serious types of discrimination. I definitely want my daughter to be able to have some sort of work-life balance even if she chooses surgery.
Probably less of an issue if female surgeons just want to do 100% clinical work, but if they have any aspirations of climbing up the academic/administrative ladder, then unfortunately often when women do put in the time to perform those “female” roles they often get passed over for promotions and such because now they’re “not working as hard as their peers.” Hence the stagnant trend over the last 20+ years of women being equally represented at the lower levels in and then drastically underrepresented at the upper levels.
^Not very typical. I do not know stats, but just an observation. Some marry, others in long relationships, few are single (mostly by their own choice, they just do not care for the “balanced” life). People are just different.
Divorce among physicians and other healthcare professionals in the United States: analysis of census survey data
(2015)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25694110
Workplace discrimination: experiences of practicing physicians.(2005)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2568696/
The $16,819 Pay Gap For Newly Trained Physicians: The Unexplained Trend Of Men Earning More Than Women (2008)
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/2/193.abstract
Women in Medicine: Are We “There” Yet? (2010)
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/732197_3
Faculty Perceptions of Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment in Academic Medicine
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=713512
Does Students’ Exposure to Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment in Medical School Affect Specialty Choice and Residency Program Selection? (2005)
Stories from the Field: Students’ Descriptions of Gender Discrimination and Sexual Harassment During Medical School (2006)
Statistics is just that - statistics. It may be relevant to a specific person and it may not.
And then, there is politically correct and incorrect statistics.
I just heard recently, that in some field(s) (maybe only one), the male salary is about 10% of the female salary. The reason that I did not hear that before is because it is politically incorrect statistics, female must be earning less, period, right? I know that girls achieve and focusing on inequalities is simply counterproductive. Use what you got, stop admiring what you do not. Males and females are not equal (thank goodness!), they use different approach to most things in life, they are different creatures.
The only career track I’m familiar with where that is the case is adult film star - and even then, it’s only in the heterosexual market, hence the “gay for pay” actors. Hopefully you can remember which one it was (or is that the reason you wouldn’t name it 
)
I know, right!? Wish these girls would just appreciate that men let them out of the house at all. Why are you girls so picky!?
Yes, this is all very true.
And I can tell you, it’s not just older male physicians and patients that discount female physicians. Pediatrics is a female heavy field, and while I have gone into a more male “dominated” subspecialty (which means that the PICU is actually pretty equal in numbers between men and women, rather than the 70/30 female tilt in pediatric residencies), I have dozens of stories in which NURSES have discounted female docs. I and my male pediatrician colleagues have it so much easier than you would ever imagine. It’s probably not as drastic as a field such as surgery, but it’s definitely a difference.
Examples:
In the NICU, the bane of pediatric residents is the calls about residual feed volumes. your watching to see how these preemies are tolerating their feeds so before the next one, the nurse pulls on the feeding tube with a syringe to see how much is left over from the last feed. This happens every 3 hours. My female friends would get calls about each and every residual on every baby, while I would sleep through the night, wake up to find that the nurses had made a decision about discarding or refeeding on their own and then sent me the order to sign electronically the next morning.
My orders were much, much, much less likely to ever be questioned, even if they were wrong. I’d figure it out, come back, rewrite it and the nurses would say things like “oh yeah, we saw that and figured you didn’t really mean that, so we decided to wait”. Female colleagues would often have to deal with the consequences because the nurses would do the order, and then when woman came back, would get “well we thought it was wrong, but you’re the doctor…” or they would get paged immediately.
I don’t have a very good explanation for why nurses would act this way but I saw it consistently and across several instutitions. My suspicion is that, at least subconsciously, there’s an element of “well she’s not that smart, I could do her job” which is then coupled by the standard female/male dynamics that are a scripted part of our culture. Nevertheless, in sum, my female colleagues have to be better doctors than I do to get the same benefit of the doubt.
"The only career track I’m familiar with where that is the case is adult film star - and even then, it’s only in the heterosexual market, hence the “gay for pay” actors. Hopefully you can remember which one it was (or is that the reason you wouldn’t name it’ - the reason that I did not “name it”, because it was out of the mouth of Tara (“Top Models”) and not statistics so to speak. Tara said that male models are paid about 10% of what female models are paid. It is irrelevant to this discussion, except that we hear so much about gender inequality, and since I have both S. and D., and GrandS and GrandD., I can only say that both could be very successful if they work hard enough. This is the key and that is what we discuss in our family. I do not see how gender inequality discussion with the kids can make them more successful, I believe that this discussion counterproductive. There are some medical specialties that are more female oriented and there were no any kind of “gender” preferential treatment that my D. has noticed so far. Her experiences are limited so far. But as far as having an MD daughter, I do not see how this article can help her. So, why to keep in mind the facts that are not helpful?
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Among her year co-residents, all the men are married; all the women are single.
And the women aren’t single by choice, but because they don’t have the time or energy to perform the typically “female” (nurturing, supportive, caretaking) role in a relationship.
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Yes, I can see that happening. And, I can see many male residents wanting to be married to have someone “take care of the loose ends” at home.
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(Also a lot of men are intimidated by a potential spouse who will substantially out-earn them.)
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This has been true for a long time. Men don’t like the comments made (often by other men)…and they don’t want to feel that they’re going to be “vetoed” because they’re the lower earner.
I have a female doctor friend who found it VERY difficult to “get dates”. She finally married around age 40, but the marriage was doomed because her H’s co-workers made comments about how he was a “kept man” and such because she earned 4 times what he did.
Semi related to this: Learned today that my university now requires all interviewers for all programs (not just MD or MD/PhD) to watch a video and read several articles on identifying implicit biases (http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/research/understanding-implicit-bias/ and if you’d like to see them in action, take a test yourself: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html) and working to remove them from the application screening/interview process.