{"id":5600,"date":"2017-07-25T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/?p=5600"},"modified":"2017-07-17T21:32:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T02:32:43","slug":"became-anonymous-feminist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/2017\/07\/25\/became-anonymous-feminist\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Became an Anonymous Feminist"},"content":{"rendered":"

A father and a son are in a car accident. \u00a0The father dies instantly, and the son is taken to the nearest hospital. \u00a0The doctor comes in and exclaims, \u201cI can\u2019t operate on this boy!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d the nurse asks.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBecause he is my son,\u201d the doctor responds.<\/em><\/p>\n

How is this possible?<\/em><\/p>\n

I first saw this riddle in a Washington Post article in October 2016.1<\/sup>\u00a0I was four years out of residency, and for the first time in my career, had started to feel like I wasn\u2019t treated quite the same as the male physicians that made up the majority of my group. \u00a0I read the riddle over and over again, but couldn\u2019t figure out the answer, so I scrolled down. \u00a0The boy\u2019s mother was the surgeon. \u00a0As a female physician searching for validation of how I was feeling, even I couldn\u2019t come up with the answer that the surgeon was a woman.<\/p>\n

I made it through medical school, residency, and fellowship without ever feeling like it was harder to succeed as a physician than my male colleagues. Even as the only female in my residency class, I never experienced (or at least recognized experiencing) gender bias. \u00a0The nurses I worked with were some of my closest friends. \u00a0I was successful at emergency medicine, and I felt like any feedback I received was constructive and fair. \u00a0Then I joined a group where almost every other doctor was an older male. Suddenly nurses were questioning my every order. Suddenly I was being told that I wasn\u2019t confident enough or approachable enough. \u00a0Suddenly I felt like my career was spiraling around me and I didn\u2019t know how to fix it.<\/p>\n

I was asked to meet with the leadership of my group. \u00a0There had been some ongoing complaints from the nursing staff about my confidence and approachability. \u00a0There were no specifics. \u00a0There were no concerns about my medical care. Initial suggestions to fix this were to bring candy and to try to ask more personal questions. \u00a0When that didn\u2019t work, I was asked to work with a physician coach, spending hours of unpaid time trying to fix a problem that no one could seem to identify. \u00a0Nobody in my group had any specific examples. Nobody in my group had witnessed anything firsthand. \u00a0I was told by multiple colleagues that it was difficult to succeed here as a female, that females in the past had failed and moved on. \u00a0I watched as some (thankfully few) of my older male colleagues communicated by yelling, while it was considered defensive when I kindly explained the thought process behind my orders when my care was questioned. \u00a0I watched older male surgeons breeze through the emergency department, belittling everyone in their path. \u00a0Where were their physician coaches? \u00a0I was putting in countless extra hours, learning to make little adjustments in my interactions, to apologize for difficult orders, to acknowledge concerns before explaining my clinical decision making, while they yelled and belittled without consequence.<\/p>\n

In the end, I\u2019m a better doctor and communicator because of it. \u00a0I persevered (or, as a supportive colleague put it, was \u201ctenacious AF\u201d), and I succeeded. \u00a0I became a partner in my group. \u00a0Everyone has room to improve, and working with a physician coach helped me become a better version of myself. But something inside had changed. \u00a0I became a partner, but I didn\u2019t become an equal. \u00a0Part of me realized that even those who supported me felt it was okay to tell me \u201cfemales have a tough time succeeding here.\u201d The reality is I\u2019m not the only female physician who has ever felt this way. This problem is so much bigger than my own experience.<\/p>\n

Women now make up almost one-third of practicing physicians, and half of today\u2019s medical students are female. \u00a0Despite this, recent studies have shown female physicians are still less likely to be introduced as \u201cdoctor\u201d by their peers.2<\/sup> 30% of female doctors report they have been sexually harassed in the workplace.3<\/sup> 77.9% of physician mothers have felt discrimination in the workplace.4<\/sup> The average pay gap between male and female physicians, after adjusting for other factors affecting compensation (age, experience, specialty, faculty rank, and measures of research productivity and clinical revenue), is $19,878 per year. \u00a0In some fields, like neurosurgery and cardiothoracic surgery, the discrepancy is as large as $44,000 per year.5<\/sup> Airlines don\u2019t believe African-American females can be doctors.6<\/sup> They apparently don\u2019t believe white, Asian, middle eastern, etc. females can be doctors either.7<\/sup><\/p>\n

And I still can\u2019t put my name on this article for fear I\u2019ll lose my job.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s bad enough that in 2017, we still have to tolerate patients calling us \u201csweetie\u201d and asking if we\u2019re old enough to be their doctor.8<\/sup> It\u2019s bad enough that even though studies suggest that female providers have lower mortality rates and have more patient-centered communication styles than male providers,9<\/sup> patient satisfaction scores don\u2019t reflect this.10<\/sup> But what do we do when our own colleagues fail to recognize their own gender biases? No female physician should ever have to feel that her gender is a factor limiting her success. We need to create environments where we recognize our biases and work to address them. We need to do better. It\u2019s 2017, and we shouldn\u2019t have to remain anonymous anymore.<\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Johnson Carolyn Y. \u00a0The disturbing reason why we don\u2019t believe young, black women are really doctors.<\/a>\u00a0 Washington Post, October 2016.<\/li>\n
  2. Files et al.\u00a0Speaker Introductions at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds: Forms of Address Reveal Gender Bias<\/a>. Journal of Women’s Health. May 2017, 26(5): 413-419.<\/li>\n
  3. Jagsi et al. Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Experiences of Academic Medical Faculty<\/a>.\u00a0JAMA. <\/em>2016;315(19):2120-2121.<\/li>\n
  4. Adesoye et al. Perceived Discrimination Experienced by Physician Mothers and Desired Workplace Changes.<\/a>\u00a0JAMA Intern Med. Published online May 8, 2017.<\/li>\n
  5. Jena et al.\u00a0Sex Differences in Physician Salary in US Public Medical Schools<\/a>. JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(9):1294-1304.<\/li>\n
  6. Johnson Carolyn Y. \u00a0The disturbing reason why we don\u2019t believe young, black women are really doctors.<\/a>\u00a0 Washington Post, October 2016.<\/li>\n
  7. Wible, Pamela. \u00a0Female physicians told to sit down, shut up, and get out of the way during emergencies as patients nearly die.<\/a> \u00a0KevinMD.com, October 2016.<\/li>\n
  8. Reiff-Pasarew, Faye. I\u2019m a young female doctor. Calling me sweetie won\u2019t help me save your life. <\/a>Washington Post, June 2017.<\/li>\n
  9. Rapaport, Lisa. Fewer deaths and complications with female physicians?<\/a> Reuters, December 2016.<\/li>\n
  10. Hall et al.\u00a0Patients’ satisfaction with male versus female physicians: a meta-analysis<\/a>. Med Care. July 2011, 49(7):611-7.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A father and a son are in a car accident. \u00a0The father dies instantly, and the son is taken to the nearest hospital. \u00a0The doctor comes in and exclaims, \u201cI can\u2019t operate on this boy!\u201d \u201cWhy not?\u201d the nurse asks….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":5604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"Why do we feel like we STILL can't always address gender bias?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,32,52,90],"coauthors":[237],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow I Became an Anonymous Feminist - 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