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.