After being called "beauty" and "nurse" by patients for the Nth time, Liu Yue (pseudonym) still stubbornly corrected: "I am a doctor, if you need to, you can go to the nurse's station and ask."
Liu Yue, 25 years old, is an intern doctor in a third-class hospital in Hubei Province.
"Once I went to the round, the patient went to the toilet to dirty his pants, and he deservedly asked me to help him change", Liu Yue said, she has been treated as a "nurse" by patients more than once, and her titles range from "beautiful" to "miss" to "nurse", which is strange, but few people call her doctor.
In the patient's perception, young women are generally "nurses", while men, regardless of age, are called "doctors". But, in fact, "the doctor and the nurse are dressed very differently, the doctor wears a white coat, no nurse hat, and the nurse's shirt and pants are separated."
Titles are only appearances, and from the beginning of entering the medical field, women have encountered many gender discrimination and unfriendliness, which are either grand or hidden.
In March 2020, Southern Weekend conducted a survey on the current situation of medical practitioners in China, supported by exclusive data provided by Lilac Garden, and the survey results showed that women are significantly more stressed in the competition for the same position than men, and women generally have a negative attitude about whether they can stand out in the job competition. Under the same conditions, female health care workers often need to make more effort to reach the same heights as men.
Source: Research report on the occupational status of medical and nursing practitioners in China
"Sorry, we only recruit men"
In August 2018, Tokyo Medical University in Japan was exposed for tampering with girls' scores to allow more men to enroll. According to a relevant person from Tokyo Medical University, every year in the preliminary examination stage, the results of female candidates will be deducted points according to a certain proportion. In some years, girls are directly reduced by 20% of their initial test scores.
This black-box operation lasted for 12 years, and finally Tokyo Medical University officially released the results of the investigation report, the chairman and president of the school were sued, and the chairman resigned.
You think this is just sexism faced by Japanese women practicing medicine, but in fact, the situation of female medical workers in China is not optimistic.
Before working in the hospital, Liu Yue was a student at the medical school of a key university in Hubei Province. When she was in school, she felt that the medical profession was not friendly to women, "When we were in class, many department teachers made it clear that they only wanted boys." 」
This unfriendliness is even more pronounced when choosing a mentor. Generally speaking, when choosing a tutor, students are asked some professionally related questions. However, when a female friend of Liu Yue first communicated with her mentor, the tutor asked the question "Do you have a boyfriend, and do you plan to stay in Wuhan after that?"
"There are always some such questions, and I don't know how to evaluate them," Liu Yue said, male students are rarely asked about family and emotional issues when choosing a mentor, but women often face these unknown problems.
Lilac Garden readers' messages
Zhao Mengdi (pseudonym) once interned in a third-class hospital in Beijing, and her teacher was a highly capable female doctor. "At that time, the hospital was going to recruit a PhD, and our teacher was one of the candidates, she had been in the inpatient department of the department for a while, and her research ability was also very strong. We all thought that this teacher was properly selected, and as a result, the hospital recruited an unknown boy, who was not as experienced as this teacher."
"When the teacher lost the election, we and the other teachers in the ward were stunned," Zhao Mengdi said, "it may be the reason for gender." Because, in later work, everyone thought that the male doctor's ability was very average, but it was he who was selected.
Similar experiences are actually not uncommon, Lilac Garden readers once complained on the Internet that "when a third-class hospital in Shanghai is recruiting, girls must reach 3.5 or more to stay in the hospital, and boys will move as long as they are alive."
Lilac Garden reader message
"Why did the girl's family choose this major, it is not very decent?"
Even when entering the medical field, women face many prejudices and discrimination in their choice of profession, and many professions are considered "not suitable for women".
Liu Yue studied reproductive medicine in school, and when she interned in the hospital, she once chatted with a fifty- or sixty-year-old uncle, and when talking about her profession, the uncle's tone suddenly became strange, "Why should the girl's family choose this, not choose a better one, so it is not very decent."
"I chose my major and I like it very much, and I don't know why he feels unseemly." Liu Yue believes that if she is a man, the uncle will not think that the reproductive medicine profession is inappropriate.
Liu Yue only encounters patients who do not understand their profession, but many women encounter gender barriers.
When Zhao Mengdi was interning in the colonoscopy room, she once came into contact with a male patient who did colonoscopy, and when she did colonoscopy, the patient's family insisted that they all let these female doctors go out.
"But in fact, we are not looking at the process of entering the colonoscope, but the picture taken after the colonoscope enters the intestine." Zhao Mengdi believes that this is a category of sexism, both men and women. "Isn't it sexism to choose the gender of the doctor when you go to the hospital to see a doctor?" In the eyes of our doctors, patients are genderless."
The specialty that is also considered unsuitable for women is surgery.
"Girls don't have to listen to these contents, anyway, they will go to internal medicine in the future", Liu Yue often heard this kind of words when she was in class, "Generally it is the clinical departments, especially the doctors and professors with senior surgical qualifications, who come to class, and will laugh at it like this."
Liu Yue could not understand why gender was used to judge whether a person was qualified to study a certain profession. "In fact, there are also girls who really have the ideal of surgery, and we also have very good students who have chosen departments such as Shenwai and Thoracic."
"Don't let me have surgery, are you really taking care of me?"
But even if women end up in the hospital through all their efforts, their ability to work will be questioned, and correspondingly, job opportunities will be reduced.
Taking surgery as an example, "Some surgical operations take a long time and consume physical strength, and many people feel that girls are not suitable for such a high-intensity work." Liu Yue believes that people have tacitly accepted from the beginning that women's abilities are not enough to support them to complete "high-intensity" surgical procedures.
Zhang Meng (pseudonym), a doctor in the colorectal surgery department at a top three hospital in Shanghai, is often asked "tired" on the operating table. Because she is a woman, in order to take care of her, the tutor generally does not let her follow too many surgeries, sometimes holding up the mirror on the stage, sometimes responsible for shooting guns and reading specimens, most of which is a relatively easy job.
At work, Zhang Meng obviously felt that "the superior is more tolerant of girls and has lower requirements."
"When I first entered the gastrointestinal surgery department, I actually felt that the gap was quite large, and everyone thought that such a little Lori could not do much work, and giving some care was actually disapproval of me." 」 Zhang Meng believes that the identity of a woman has made her lose some opportunities to learn, "In order to gain recognition, I never shout tired when I work, my body will not show it when I am uncomfortable, and I am most afraid of leaving a squeamish impression on others."
Once, he was praised by his superiors as "who said that women are inferior to men", and Zhang Meng was excited for several days.
In fact, these so-called "cares" for women invisibly reduce women's opportunities to exercise, and also make it more difficult for them to obtain career advancement. Liu Yue believes that "the department always feels that you have to take care of you, and some of the predecessors who chose surgery before have also transferred to scientific research posts and administrative posts." If you choose surgery, compared with male doctors of the same age or the same level in the department, there may be less room for growth and fewer opportunities to learn."
A 2015 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that female physicians are less likely to reach the rank of full professor (11.9% vs 28.6%) than male physicians in academia. [1]
But are women really not suitable for surgical work?
"I feel like I can do the job of surgery, but in fact surgery requires not only physical strength, but also attention, care and patience, and women are no worse than men in these areas." 」 Xie Ling (pseudonym), a female doctor in the breast surgery department of a tertiary hospital in Shanghai, believes that "gentlemanly demeanor is unnecessary in clinical work, and can even be said to be a boring prejudice."
Wu Di (pseudonym) also believes that her female identity does not affect her ability to work as a surgeon at all, and she is currently working as an orthopedic surgeon in a top three hospital in Shanghai. "A lot of people are surprised by the title and label of female surgeon. However, beyond people's perception, it is often not outside the physical strength but outside the gender test, and competence and gender should never be compared with the topic and factor."
As a doctor, women are no worse than men
Among feminist groups, the idea that "differences within genders are much greater than differences between men" is widely circulated. That is to say, our society has both muscular women who can win medals in the Olympic Games, and men who can't run eight hundred meters but can write good poetry.
In other words, there are both female doctors who can complete an operation for 18 hours without rest, and male nurses who are meticulous and passionate about nursing work, and they should all be recognized by society. The harm of the collective label to these people is enormous, and a general and unfair summary of how women and men are is meaningless for any individual full of countless possibilities.
In fact, studies have long shown that women are not worse than men in the matter of being doctors, and the communication methods of female doctors are more patient-centered, and they are more reassuring to patients. [2]
A 2018 study by The Lancet showed that female healthcare workers were able to provide fewer "unnecessary or harmful" treatment options than men in primary health care after controlling for potential sources of bias, starting from five aspects: completion of clinical checklists, doctor-patient communication, appropriate antibiotic treatment, patient prognosis, and medical costs. [3]
In February 2019, The Lancet published a special thematic issue focusing on women in research, "Increasing women's influence in research, medical care and global health", and in an editorial in the special issue, The Lancet proposed:
"If the fields of scientific research, health and global health want to work to improve human lives, they must represent the communities they serve. Fighting for gender equality is a responsibility for everyone, which means that feminism is meant to be for everyone, including men and women, as well as researchers, clinicians, funding supporters, institutional leaders, and even medical journals."
As a female doctor, Wu Di is quite touched by this, she believes that gender equality is never a matter of one gender, and all women can do is to let themselves be seen. "I think what everyone needs a little more is tolerance and understanding, maybe in daily life will not put women's rights, equality on the lips, but your appearance may be the next female medical worker not to be surprised and questioned the first step." 」