Written by Christine Wan | Edited by Zainab Bhatti and Nicole Xu

Gender disparities within the medical and academic worlds are becoming increasingly apparent. Several studies have even identified significant gender discrepancies in grant funding, leadership positions, and publications’ impacts in surgical subspecialties, such as vascular surgery. For instance, one such study focuses on the disparities within the realm of academic vascular surgery. This study ultimately concludes that although there appears to be greater representation of women in the realm of academic vascular surgery now relative to decades ago, discrepancies still exist. Women not only receive fewer grants and industry payments¹ compared to men, women still hold fewer leadership positions, such as chief of surgery, and are not published or cited nearly as often as their male colleagues. In fact, only 11% of vascular surgeons are women, and these women have 35% fewer publications compared to their male counterparts. Research papers written by women are even cited less than half as often as research conducted by male surgeons (Carnevale et al).

Moreover, people are increasingly shedding light not only on just sexism, but also on coded sexism² within the medical and academic communities. An article published, and later retracted, by the Journal of Vascular Surgery provides an example of blatant coded sexism in the medical community. The article, written and reviewed by mainly male authors, centers on “unprofessional” and “provocative” social media content, most of which were posted on female physicians’ personal accounts (Hardouin). The editorial board ultimately stated, after further review, that the article presents issues, including gender bias and infringement of privacy, which prompted the journal to retract this article (Shapiro). Nevertheless, such occurrences are gaining greater traction due to the increasing spread of such information through social media as well as the hashtag: #MedBikini.

Through this hashtag and other forms of backlash against the article, the authors addressed the blatant issues of patient privacy and uncollegial behavior. However, according to Shapiro, the focus on female surgeons wearing bikinis, especially tracked by male students and colleagues under fake social media accounts, is aligned with the “creep” factor. With the rise of another hashtag, #ILookLikeASurgeon, it has increasingly been emphasized that those who are bikini-clad, of all-shapes-and-size, and of all genders regardless of identity can be surgeons. The #MedBikini trend has aimed to humanize, not deprofessionalize, women in a traditionally male profession (Shapiro).

As such, the utilization of social media and other forms of media has largely aided in shedding light on issues like sheer sexism within the medical community and has even worked to push against these issues.

1. Industry Payments: payments or investments sponsored by healthcare industries (Carnevale et al.)

2. Coded Sexism: sexism that is relatively less blatant and apparent; can be rooted in definitions of professionalism or, rather, unprofessionalism (Shapiro). For instance, coded sexism is involved regarding claims that young women physicians’ private social media account posts, such as their bikini posts, were “unprofessional.”

Bibliography

Carnevale, Matthew et al. “Gender disparities in academic vascular surgeons.” Journal of vascular surgery vol. 72,4 (2020): 1445-1450. doi:10.1016/j.jvs.2019.12.042

Hardouin, Scott et al. “RETRACTED: Prevalence of unprofessional social media content among young vascular surgeons.” Journal of vascular surgery vol. 72,2 (2020): 667-671. doi:10.1016/j.jvs.2019.10.069

Shapiro, Nina. “Viral #MedBikini Response To Controversial Manuscript Leads Editor To Retract Article.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 25 July 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/ninashapiro/2020/07/25/viral-medbikini-response-to-controversial-manuscript-leads-editor-to-retract-article/?sh=62996cc11f47.