Gender discrimination in health professions refers to the entire culture of bias against female clinicians, expressed verbally through derogatory and aggressive comments, lower pay and other forms of discriminatory actions from predominantly male peers. These women face difficulties in their work environment as a result of a largely male dominated positions of power within the medical field as well as initial biases presented in the hiring process, but not limited to promotions.
Men who are nurses are often subjected to stereotypic treatment as a result of being in a largely female dominated field. These stereotypes include patients assuming sexual orientation, job title, or not feeling comfortable with a male nurse.
Medical education Women are underrepresented in leadership positions in academic medicine. Women and men begin their medical careers at similar rates but they do not advance at the same rate. Studies indicate a systematic bias that has resulted in relatively fewer appointments to academic chairs. 32% of associate professors at medical schools are women, 20% of full professors are women, 14% of department chairs are women, and 11% of deans of medical schools are women.
A factor that impedes women's opportunities for advancement in academic medicine is a "stereotype-based cognitive bias". There are two forms of this. The first type is related to clear personal beliefs about women, such as believing that women are less committed to their careers than men and believing that women are worse leaders than men. The second type is implicit bias, which is harder to see because the biases are harder to see, but they still influence one's judgment and actions towards women. Although implicit gender bias still plays a role, explicit bias in academic medicine has significantly decreased during the past half century in the United States as a result of Title IX getting passed. Implicit bias has had little to no improvement. Cultural stereotypes characterize women as "communal", such as kind, dependent, and nurturing, but characterize women as lacking "agentic" traits, such as logical, independent, and strong, which are typically used as a male stereotype. These stereotypes make it difficult for women to achieve in the workforce, specifically in medicine, science, and in leadership. While men are associated with "agentic" traits and women are not, this can lead to women feeling that their work is less valued and they typically receive fewer nominations for opportunities that can advance their career. It has also been found that gender stereotypes play a role in socializing students towards their specialties. For example, women are more likely to go into communal specialties, including family medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine, while men are more likely to go into surgery, research, and be the chair of a position. If women to go into specialties dominated by males, they typically have lower statuses. Residency is the first time the medical students, or new physicians, get to be in a leadership role. Men who are too communal can be accused of being "wimpy" or "soft" whereas women who are too agentic can be accused of being "bossy" or "domineering".
These stereotypes are due to the lack of gender awareness and role models. Female medical students have reported sexual harassment and discrimination. This is of concern because these obstacles affect "the professional identity formation and specialty choice". Personality differences exist between male and female surgical students. Fewer women choose to specialize in surgery. The lack of female role models may discourage some from choosing a surgical career.
A study by the National Medical Foundation found that 60% of women have reported that gender has had an effect on their educational experience whereas only 25% of males have reported that gender has had an effect on their educational experience. Women said they felt as though they had to be twice as good to be treated equal to men. Additionally, 30.7% of women reported overcoming fear and failure whereas only 19.4% of males reported overcoming fear and failure in education
One response to bias against women academics has been to conduct training for faculty and students to recognize bias and change their habits. The study used professional development, counseling psychology, adult learning, and health behavioral change to development a bias-learning training where data showed that gender biases and habits were not permanent and that they could be shaped and changed.
There is also a persisting class and race gap that is being ignored by contemporary feminist debate, as the discussion about feminism in the medical profession tends to place "too much focus on the opportunities afforded to educated middle class women", most of them white.
Most medical textbooks and other educational materials show a strong bias toward male bodies, especially in images, where most images not specific to the urogenital system or breasts appear to depict men. Some depictions of women in these images are sexualized in their presentation; one 1971 textbook was withdrawn due to controversy because while 77% of the images depicted women, these images were often presented in a pornographic manner similar to pin-up models, while images depicting men tended to crop out the face and genitalia and focus on the body parts being described. Descriptions of the clitoris and the female perineum tend to be brief and in subordinating comparison to their male homologs, the penis and the male perineum. According to David C. Page at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, this results in equipment, such as hip replacements, that are exclusively designed for male patients; and research studies that exclusively use male patients or animal models.
Female clinicians
While both men and women are enrolling in medical school at similar rates, in 2015 the United States reported having 34% active female physicians and 66% active male physicians. The lower rates of practicing female physicians is associated with their higher rates of experiencing: sexual assault, wage disparities, gender norms, sexism, and medical school sabotage.
Sexual assault
According to a Medscape survey, more than 10% of female physicians have experienced workplace sexual assault compared to 4% of men. Among women who have experienced sexual assault and harassment, 50% stated that this experience negatively impacted their career advancement. Sexual harassment is common amongst younger clinicians when they come in contact with male clinicians in power who have more seniority over them. Due to their sense of power over their coworkers and employees, they feel empowered to commit acts of sexual assault. In many cases, female survivors of sexual assault fail to come forward and report these crimes because they are labeled "troublemakers" and have a hard time finding new employment. As a result of this, and Human Relations typically functioning to protect the company/hospital rather than the survivor, female physician survivors are unlikely to report their experiences, resulting in future female physicians also remaining silent if abused, thus continue the cyclical cycle of misconduct within the medical system.
Wage gap
Female surgeons are also subject to the wage gap. Females were reported to have lower salaries than male surgeons. In a study conducted in 1990, male clinicians were making a mean earnings of $155,400, while female clinicians were making a mean earnings of $109,900; about $45,500 less than their male counterparts. As of 2016, female physicians have statistically been found to make about $18,677 less than male physicians. Pay disparities for female physicians has also been blamed on women not wanting to commit to leadership roles which pay higher salaries. Besides gender biases, it is also believed that female physicians are paid less because they are more likely to bill their patients less (as they fear their patient will be unable to pay their bill) and are less likely to be aggressive when negotiating their salary and contract. Despite female physicians making less money and being less likely to bill, a study done in 2017 across 24.4 million primary care offices showed that they are often the ones spending more time in direct patient care per visit, per day, and per year.
Communal specialties, which women are more likely to go into, often have a lower pay than the specialties in which men typically go into. Women have been found to have a larger representation than men in lower-paying specialties, such as pediatrics and men have a larger representation in higher-paying specialties, such as cardiology and surgery. In New York State between 1999 and 2008, the average starting salary for men was $187,385 whereas the mean starting salary for women was $158,727. In 2001, it was found that male physicians earned roughly around 41% more than their female colleagues. As of 2017, an updated version then found that the percentage had dropped to roughly around 27.7%. That is roughly around a 100,000 dollar difference in salary per year. However, women who work in radiology are the only women who make more than their male colleagues—the difference is only about 2,000 dollars. A study published in 2005 found that women physicians in the US had an annual earning gap of 11% if they were married, 14% if they had one child, and 22% if they had more than one child. Women typically had household obligations that affected their ability to work as much as men and therefore led to a trade-off of higher earnings for family-friendly jobs.
Traditional gender norms
Traditional gender norms are another barrier female physicians face in the medical field. According to research, having children is a career stopper for female physicians. It is reported that approximately 30% of female physicians have faced discrimination for either being pregnant or needing to breastfeed/pump. Besides this, female physicians are seven times more likely to not work part time when compared to men as their maternity leaves are on average four weeks shorter than what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends. It was found that the percentage of female clinicians working part-time in either a hospital setting or a general physician's office after having a child is much higher than the percentage of these women working full-time after having a child (92.7%, 96.3% 59.2%, 76.5% respectively). Along with this, female physicians are often paid less because traditional gender norms put child rearing responsibilities on the mother. In addition to already having a stressful job, research shows that the amount of domestic tasks and responsibilities, as well as family care is still the same. This led to the concept of having a work-life balance being more challenging for women.
Patient sexism
Female physicians have reported encountering sexism in their work. Female physicians are often mistaken for nurses by patients. Patients have also been reported to have less trust in their physician if they are female and instead ask for a second opinion from a male physician.
Medical school sabotage
Female physicians also face gender bias in medical schools. In 2018, Tokyo Medical University lowered the test scores of its female applicants. Since 2006, the university has been subtracting points from the exams of female applicants while adding, on average, 20 points to the exams of male applicants.
Unfair testing scores are not the only thing that are troubling in medical school; women, especially in more recent times, have been the majority group at medical school, they still face discrimination as men are often given the "decision-making" positions/ supervising positions at medical institutions. This creates a gap for mistreatment through faulty (sexist, discriminating,& etc.) supervisors.