Workforce issues
‘Too small to be a surgeon’: cutting out gender bias
A new survey by the Confederation of British Surgery (CBS) has identified continuing gender bias in surgical disciplines. The feedback suggests that women face barriers that men do not. In this article, the surgical trade union comments on the latest findings and calls on the surgical community to take action.
The stats should startle, but sadly they are not unexpected. The Confederation of British Surgery’s survey about gender bias specific to surgery was distributed to everyone from med students to established consultants. The findings highlight how women are still being told that their gender will hinder their ability to pursue a surgical career. 77.78% of female respondents reported that,
yes, they have experienced this particular misogyny; 71.43% explicitly told they were the wrong gender for the profession – at some point in their career. To put this in context, zero percent of men reported experiencing any gender bias whatsoever during their navigation of the same landscape. What does this show us? It demonstrates that, while progress has been made in promoting equity and equality in the workplace in general, we still have a way to go when it comes to surgical careers specifically. Consultant plastic surgeon and Board member at the Confederation of British Surgery, Miss Philippa Jackson, says, “There’s this constant scrutiny over women’s lives that men simply don’t face. I’ve had people ask me about my menstrual cycle, about when I planned to have children, how many, and how I’d manage that alongside my career, as if it’s anyone’s business.” However, it’s not just men who do this - women are guilty of it too, perpetuating the idea that we have to fit into a system built for male norms. Philippa continues, “I’ve stood in theatres
and watched my male counterparts get opportunities I was overlooked for.” Speaking about her experiences upon returning from maternity leave, she continues, “After maternity leave, I genuinely considered leaving surgery altogether because of how hard it was. We call women’s skill ‘soft skills’, the holistic, empathetic approaches, but these aren’t soft, they’re essential. And yet, they are so often dismissed
as unimportant, when in reality they’re exactly what we need more of in surgery.” With 66.67% of female medical students and 88.89% of female consultants reporting having experienced gender bias, we wonder how many students have quit their dreams of a surgical career because of this entrenched misogyny. A stat that backs up this fear is that 87.5% of female surgical trainees were discouraged from pursuing surgical careers, being told to, ‘…think about their “future husband and children” before pursuing surgery’. Others have been told that they are ‘too small’ for orthopaedics and mocked for making the choice to pursue this specialty, while some reported being told that they should choose specialties more conducive to family life (e.g. as a GP). One respondent even reported being told that she was ‘useless’; and that part-time
surgeons (arguably more conducive to family life) ‘aren’t as good’. It’s a depressing situation - for those women who manage to fight through the initial barriers, a lifetime of hurdles awaits. Female surgeons must be prepared to answer uncomfortable questions, to fend off queries about their fertility, and their family plans. Furthermore, they must be prepared to be told they’re better off finding a male surgeon to marry so they don’t ‘have’ to work, that their children will suffer for their career decisions, that they should freeze their eggs, make choices about life events that they aren’t ready to even consider, or just simply… not be a surgeon. If they are supported in their choice of career, or manage to navigate through the first set of hurdles, they must then justify which specialty they are going to go into. Not orthopaedics,
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