UK Edition
Doctors should be referred to as ‘her’ and ‘she’ by default to end gender bias, says prof
Patients should start referring to doctors as ‘her’ and ‘she’ by default instead of ‘him’ and ‘he’ to end the inherent sexism attached to the job title, a leading neurologist has claimed.
Dr Elizabeth Loder, Head of Research at The BMJ (British Medical Journal), said it was time to start using female pronouns as the overall number of women doctors would soon overtake men.
There are currently 156,000 registered male doctors in Britain, compared to 133,000 females but women have already overtaken men as GPs, with 33,000 now practising compared to 27,300 men.
And women now make up 55 per cent of medical students suggesting the overall figure will soon tip over as well.
Yet despite the dramatic u-turn in the gender of doctors in recent years, Dr Loder said it was still common for people to assume that a doctor must be a man.
Writing in the BMJ, Dr Loder, who is also a Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, said: “Medicine is not leading the way in gender equity. Gender discrimination and harassment are serious and pervasive issues in academic and clinical medicine.
“Language reflects and is part of the problem. The stereotype that doctors are men persists at a time when almost half of physicians are female, and it has been internalised by women physicians like me, so it’s a problem that needs to be fixed.
“How to do this? It would help to retire ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’ as the default pronouns for doctors and make a deliberate switch to ‘she’ ‘her’ and ‘hers’.
“When in doubt, and the gender of the doctor is unknown, let’s use female pronouns to send a message and open minds. Let’s assume that doctors are women until we know otherwise.”
Dr Loder warned that the language used to describe doctors remains ‘stubbornly masculine’ and admitted she herself was guilty of using the male pronoun when referring to specialists.
“Last week, for example, a patient told me his cardiologist had some questions about a treatment I had recommended. “I’ll give him a call,” I said. “Her,” corrected the patient,” she said.
She also argued that ‘degendering’ the profession with ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘theirs’ was also not the solution because women deserve to own the default pronoun for a while.
Instead she advises that when someone says ‘I went to the doctor today’ people should consider replying with ‘What did she say?’
Recent research from Sweden that showed changing pronouns can change the way people think. In recent years the country has started using the gender-neutral ‘hen’ instead of ‘hon’ she or ‘han’ he. Some lifestyle magazines and children’s books now use ‘hen’ exclusively.
A study published in August showed that when 2,000 Swedes were asked to create a story, most automatically did it using ‘hen’ showing the word is now firmly embedded in the culture.
Dr Loder said that when people stop looking surprised when people use the female pronoun for doctors it will be time for genderless pronouns.
“Using female pronouns for doctors would force everyone, on a regular basis, to remember that women can be doctors,” she added.
“Soon the default use of female pronouns will make sense for the same reason we’ve defaulted to male pronouns: it will be the best reflection of reality and the new gender makeup of the workforce.
“You might get some startled looks.That’s how you know your educational point has been received.”