Association of Women SurgeonsThe erasure of gender in academic surgery: a qualitative study
Section snippets
Methods
This study used a generic qualitative methodology informed by critical feminist theory.12 Our team originally planned to collect data through several focus groups, guided by a semi-structured interview guide. However, due to the busy practices of our participants, we were only able to schedule one focus group with 4 surgeons (from 2 subspecialties). We therefore used what we had learned from the focus group to inform an interview guide for semi-structured key informant interviews, which were
Findings
We report first on the focus group data. The conversation we engaged in during the focus group was candid, and the women participants shared a series of accounts from their lives during medical training and practice that ranged from overt harassment and bullying to feeling pressured to having to adopt certain rigid roles in relation to their male mentors. Statements such as the following were typical from the focus group data:
My gender poses challenges for my work on a daily basis. When medical
Comments
Our findings support a growing body of evidence that indicates people—especially women—are often unwilling to identify as victims of discrimination or inequity.14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 This may be especially true in our population of successful academic surgeons. Although our participants deny any possibility of gender differences in their workplace, their accounts of their experiences instead suggest that surgery remains a gendered profession. However, several women surgeons argued that because
Conclusion
As overt acts of discrimination become less acceptable in mainstream society, discrimination does not necessarily disappear but rather manifests itself in ambiguous and covert forms. This has the effect of rendering gender issues difficult to identify and address. An irony of our study is that through disavowing and distancing themselves from gender discrimination, these women ultimately exposed the degree to which these issues continue to be pervasive in surgery. It is encouraging to find that
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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.