Mr. Doctor and Ms. Nurse
Remember that old riddle? A man and his son are traveling in a car when they meet with a terrible accident. The man dies on the spot and the boy is rushed to the hospital. The surgeon who is about to perform the operation takes one look at the boy and gasps- “I can’t operate on him. This is my son.” How is this possible?
If you took more than 5 seconds to say, “The doctor is his mother”, chances are that there is some unconscious bias operating in your mind. Many of the people I have asked this question to have been fixed. They came up with solutions that covered paranormal activity, doppelgangers or Catholic priests and accused me of manipulating facts and indulging in poor grammar. That seemed more plausible than the fact that the surgeon can be a woman.
In the syrupy Mills & Boons novels that I favored as a teen, the doctor-nurse romance was a staple. A writer, Betty Neels, I think, specialized in chaste sacrificing nurses and autocratic surgeons. Others portrayed the woman as the secretary to the rich arrogant tycoon/CEO. The woman’s job role was always subordinate to the male one. The man always made more money. He was more powerful. That was the norm. I did not question it at that time. It did not even strike me as an anomaly but somewhere along the way, I must have imbibed some messages subliminally.
These biases show up in innocuous ways. Recently, I was conducting a Leadership workshop for a group of Distributors for a Large Indian manufacturing company. All the participants were male, hardy entrepreneurs from across the country. We were waiting for the Head of Sales to address the gathering. When I stepped out of the room to look for him, I noticed a smart lady heading towards me. “Shall we start? I am _________. I head the Sales for this division.” she said. Couldn’t I help the Oh? that escaped my lips. How readily I had assumed that the Head of Sales in such a firm would be a man. The little jump of surprise, I realized later, was probably an indication that I did have a preconceived notion about the areas in which women could succeed. I actively support equal opportunities and vehemently argue with anyone who says that women can’t be leaders but at some level, I might be having a bias as well, an insidious assumption that lurks beneath the surface and rears its ugly head in unlikely places.
The problem with an unconscious bias is that it is not even on our radar. It is easy to protest against blatant discrimination. It is even easier to spot prejudices in others. It is difficult to realize and then admit that I could be biased in areas that I publicly support and authentically endorse. The truth is that even people in the group that is at the receiving end of a bias, are biased against themselves. I know women who support the cause of equal pay and representation for women but still do not pay minimum wages to the domestic help. These maids are not ‘women like us.’ Successful women leaders can say “She asked for it”‘ when talking about a rape victim. It seems like hypocrisy but biases exist at many different levels that it becomes difficult to spot them when they come into play.
These schemas and notions are so deeply ingrained and an integral part of our emotional makeup that it is even more difficult to identify where they came from. Psychology and neuroscience show that these patterns were probably for our protection. Our brain jumps to conclusions and takes shortcuts because it is important for us to take some prompt action for our safety. The environment reinforces them. Over time they become self-perpetuating myths that seem like reality. When it comes to gender, our schemas are centuries old. ‘A woman’s place is in the home.’ ‘Men are the providers.’ ‘ Girls should play with dolls.’ etc ..etc
The ‘women are not good at science’ bias leads to many men and women believing that they are not good at science. So many girls don’t pursue science. Few study medicine. Fewer still become doctors. So there are few women doctors. That just goes to show that women are not good at science and don’t make good doctors. The numbers show it. And the numbers keep showing it.
According to the paper “Human resources for health in India”, published in the British Medical Journal ‘Lancet’, one in five dentists are women while the number stands at one in 10 pharmacists. Only 17% of all allopathic doctors and 6% of allopathic doctors in rural areas are women. The number of female doctors per 10,000 population ranges from 7.5 in Chandigarh to 0.26 in Bihar. The numbers of women astronauts, scientists, engineers, and mathematicians are also abysmally low. As are the statistics of women in leadership roles and positions of power. There are probably several economic, social and political reasons for this. Dig a little deeper and you will find some bias at the bottom that even the women were not aware of.
If you are not even aware that you are not aware, how do you go about changing anything?
There are tests now like the Implicit Association Test (IAT) that can measure the degree of bias a person has regarding gender, race, religion, and others. The results can be startling and in some cases move people to action.
One of the biggest factors that help to remove our biases is the presence of positive role models who challenge that bias. Apparently, the portrayal of a popular good-hearted African American president in the American television series 24 and similar positive portrayals of Blacks in the media helped in the election of Obama as President. Recently, there has been a positive buzz about the Tanishq advertisement which shows the remarriage of a single mother.
However, more powerful than fictitious images are the stories of the real men and women who bend the norm, challenge the stereotypes and break out of the self-perpetuating cycle that keeps them small and subordinate. I see a number of women doctors these days, not just the gynecologists. These lady doctors probably owe it to the pioneers, the first ladies to study medicine in India- Anandbai Joshi, Kadambini Ganguly and Muthulakshmi Reddy who became doctors towards the end of the nineteenth century. They had no role models, were probably at the receiving end of all kinds of prejudices and mindsets. They probably had no indication that they might succeed, they must have suffered from self-doubt but they went ahead and did it, paving the way for women who came after them.
We still need more women to be doctors in India to meet the demand for healthcare. Maybe we also need a Grey’s Anatomy on our Television with a strong feisty version of Meredith Grey. We need more books where the doctors are women.
On a lighter note, I did a random search of contemporary Medical Romances on the Mills & Boons website. Six out of the ten books featured women as doctors enjoying a romp with a fellow doctor. Three heroines were nurses, one was a midwife. There was no male nurse romancing a lady surgeon.
This article was first published on IBN Live’s blog
