Gender Bias in Medical Education: Are the Victims Only Women?

We are sadly familiar with gender bias that creates disadvantages for women. There is an invisible glass ceiling that prevents women to reach higher levels in their professions.

Along with many areas outside medical education, it is fair to say that this applies to medical education as well, especially in the departments that are dominated by men.

However, is it fair to say that gender bias occurs only as a disadvantage for women? Isn’t there any gender bias that creates disadvantages for men? For example, is it possible to see a gender bias in some departments dominated by women inside medical education?

Good questions, aren’t they? A research group has focused on assessment scores of interns from both genders in the areas that are dominated by women or men. The study has really interesting results.

The flamingo is ready to present them. Watch here or keep reading.

There is a fact about gender segregation in the medical field. It is evident. It has been shown by several studies across different countries. The fact in these previous research is that “women mostly specialize in residencies that are considered as requiring more social skills”, such as Family Medicine, and Pediatrics, but are under-represented in surgical fields, which are mostly dominated by men. So, there are women-dominated departments as well as men-dominated departments.

Starting from this point, researchers attempted to carry out research about that in Israel. The researchers are saying that “we tested whether the numerical representation of women and men in a given specialty creates a difference in how women and men interns are assessed by their superiors”. They retrospectively collected assessment scores from more than three thousand review reports of 421 interns. Their aim was to find out whether gender dominance leads to low or high scores based on gender. It’s a really exciting research.

And the results are interesting. First, the non-interesting result. As all of us easily can predict, “women are evaluated more negatively in fields with a low representation of women doctors” such as orthopedics and general surgery. And here is the interesting one, “men are evaluated more negatively in fields with a low representation of men” such as pediatrics and family medicine. Moreover, the results showed that “this cannot be explained by their skills” because “there was no difference in their skills scores”.

A possible explanation of this situation would be that, as the authors stated, “people tend to assume that in occupations that are dominated by men, stereotypically masculine attributes are necessary for success, whereas in occupations that are dominated by women, stereotypically feminine attributes.”

Even if this kind of study does not allow us to establish causal relations, it is evident that gender bias is not only for women. It creates disadvantages for men as well. We need to be aware of and resist all kinds of gender bias regardless of who has been done to.

If you want to read more, you can find the link to the article at the description section of the video: https://youtu.be/FSlCGKSnnHo

See you and adios para amigos y amigas!

And also, don’t forget the flamingo.