Random feminist rant

[elettaria]

I am so very fed up of giving my details over the phone and being asked, "Is it Miss or Mrs?" without the option of Ms, or of being addressed as Mrs by default, regardless of what I've asked them to call me. I rang the Financial Ombudsman today and was greeted with this yet again. I'd actually rung to point out that they'd got my address wrong, but since they added this to having addressed the letter to Mrs even though I'd said firmly on the phone that it was Ms, the guy ended up getting a little lecture on how it's frankly rather offensive to categorise women by their marital status whether they like it or not (and also that if I'm Mrs, then I'm committing adultery and I don't think my partner would be too happy about it all). His excuse was that if he started asking, "Is it Miss, Mrs, Doctor, Reverend..." the list would go on for ever. He just didn't seem to get that Ms should be the default. It's 2009 and this problem occurs more often than not.*

So today I look at the news and encounter Female medics "to outnumber male". This does not surprise me in the least. Due to the way men and women are currently socialised, there are certain professions which have traditionally been male but fit much better with current models of female behaviour, in particular anything which involves caring or pastoral work. You can see the same pattern at work with the clergy: for instance, female rabbinical students slightly outnumber male ones at the Liberal/Reform rabbinical college in London. This doesn't mean that the glass ceiling has been broken in either the medical or the religious worlds (or academia or law, come to that), as is immediately evidenced when you look at the number of women in the higher-level jobs. Still, it's encouraging news.

But do the headlines say "Women outnumber men as medical students but are still alarmingly under-represented at the top of their profession?" No, they say Rise in women doctors "worrying". Women are more likely to work part-time, and the system is not currently all that well set-up for part-time work. The solutions are either a) limit the number of women and/or part-time employees; or b) modify the system so that it functions well with a higher number of part-time employees. The first option is wholly unethical and constitutes gender discrmination. We're meant to be past the stage where a woman can be turned down for a job because everyone knows that she'll mess things up by going on maternity leave just when she's needed. And whatever happened to paternity leave? Parents work, in many if not most cases both parents work, and there are plenty of fathers who would prefer to be able to spend more time with their kids. We need to move away from the assumption that women and women alone are dedicated to childrearing and men are the breadwinners. It's not true, it's not just, and it's buggering up the workplace. It's perfectly possible to relate childrearing to working in a more egalitarian fashion: look at the Swedish system, for instance.

Going back to doctors, I for one have a strong preference for seeing a doctor of my own gender. My reasons for this are personal, but suffice it to say that it's a common preference amongst women, especially when it comes to more intimate medical matters. Men don't seem to be as bothered about this as women are, on average. I don't know how much of this is down to women being more likely to need to talk about intimate matters with medical professionals (issues such as sexual dysfunction which can affect both genders aside, put contraception, smear tests, childbirth, PMS, menopause against prostate and testicular cancer), and how much of it is due to gender dynamics relating to power, fear, respect. There's also the issue of some religions requiring a same-gender doctor for women; I don't know if they require it for men, I've certainly never heard that they do but it would be logical.

Whatever the reason, from a patient's perspective there is a distinct advantage to having slightly more women than men in the medical profession. My GP works part-time because she has a small child, and guess what, I'm still far happier with her than I've been with previous doctors. I know that I can ring my surgery and get hold of my GP within a couple of days, and that if it's urgent I can get hold of a female doctor if necessary (though I don't always bother if it's something basic like an ear infection). My mother has a GP who is much harder to get hold of than mine despite the fact that he works full-time, she finds that he is terribly condescending in a way that's typical of a certain type of male-female interaction, and she'd never feel comfortable discussing gynaecological matters with him. Indeed, she sounds far, far less comfortable with him than I am with my GP, and I think a lot of that is due to gender dynamics. Women are more likely to talk freely to other women they don't know well than they are to men, and less likely to feel intimidated. Women are socialised to listen, men to give orders: it's a sweeping generalisation, of course, but the overall pattern I've observed with doctors and other authority figures does reflect it. If I'm not getting on well with medication my GP has prescribed, I ring her up and chat about it, and she adjusts my medication accordingly. My mother would never dare do that, and considering the behaviour she's reported, I'm not surprised. Most of this will, of course, be down to the fact that I have a stonking good GP and hers isn't as good, and I've encountered plenty of good male doctors and bad female doctors, but I still suspect that gender dynamics remain relevant.

Do I think that men shouldn't be allowed to be doctors? Good heavens, no. Do I think that the increasing number of women in the medical world is a good thing? Yes, and I think it should be encouraged. I also think that attitudes need to shift, and that incorporating more traditionally female values, into what is still a very male-dominated situation, would be beneficial. Put bluntly, we need fewer doctors who think they are God and more doctors who are willing to let their patients talk about anything they need to.

I'm curious to see how other people feel about this, so here is a little poll. I've tried to make it as flexible as possible, which is always tricky. Forgive me if I've messed up anywhere. For the sake of simplicity, the gender options are male, female and other. You may wish to pick "other" if you identify primarily as one gender but your experience has encompassed more than that.

* Apart from that glazier who addressed a letter to me as Mr, which was somewhat startling. Between that and getting my flat number wrong, I decided that I didn't trust them to get the measurements for my window right.

[Poll #1410333]

Comments

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

I currently have a fabulous (male) GP, and have, in the past, had one really great female GP and about the same number of really shite female and male GPs (the fact it was a famale GP who didn't know how to palpate to find a breast lump was particularly startling, though)

99% of the time I really don't care what gender my doctors are, I care that they're good doctors, who listen, respect, and treat me well. I would, though, just once like to get to see a female gynecological specialist, though, because they're *always* guys, and that's ever so slightly weird.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

I've generally much preferred seeing male doctors for intimate female issues. When examining particularly, I've always found men to be much gentler.

I've had internal exams done by 4 female doctors/nurses and 3 of them actually told me off for wincing and that it didn't hurt really which, since I wasn't impeding them from doing the exam, I thought was frankly a bit silly. I've had internal exams done by 3 male doctors/nurses and all were as pleasant as internal exams are ever going to be.

[finnygan.livejournal.com]

Re. the miss/ms/mrs thing: I know! I couldn't believe it when I came to the UK and was actually given official documents that noted my marital status. I don't want my credit card to state Miss [my first names' initials] [my last name] - I want it to have my name on it. Anything else is completely ridiculous, to my mind. My marital status is utterly irrelevant to any of these things, and I frankly find the insistence on using that information rather offensive. I realise that the UK tends to be rather more formal with these things than is usual in Denmark - I'd have trouble being formal with the Queen - but including marital status in the mix just makes it nearly impossible for me to cope with. It's one thing that really puzzles me - the British seem so preoccupied with privacy, but that piece of extremely personal information must be out there for all to see. It's just really, really weird.

... Okay, I could keep ranting about this until the cows come home. I'll just go look at the rest of the post instead now.

[altglas.livejournal.com]

I don't care for most things. I prefer to have smear tests with a female sexual health nurse as they firstly know what it's like to be prodded and secondly perform these tests all the time.

My mum had a male gyno/obstretrician for my sister's birth who kept telling her to go home - "I'm a doctor and I'm telling you the baby won't be here for two days". My mum: "I'm a woman who has given birth twice and I'm telling you the baby will be here this afternoon." Which she was. The doctor missed it because he'd wandered off somewhere

[leenah.livejournal.com]

here, in the US, as far as i know Ms. is standard. you might find it on forms, miss, mrs, whatever, but i'd never expect to hear it in a phone call. they automatically default to Ms. if you sound female.

re: doctors - i usually see nurse practitioners. i've seen them for years and am comfy with them.

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

Argh, I hate the Miss/Mrs question! I don't usually make a point of using my title, and I don't correct anyone who calls me Ms, but I do always answer 'Is that Miss or Mrs?' with 'It's Doctor, actually.'

I don't have a preference for a doctor's gender on most occasions (although I've asked for a female GP before, and never had a problem with getting one). With that said, the only people in my life I've ever heard use 'Mr Right' unironically were doctors - two of them, on unrelated separate occasions! Difficult to know quite what to say to "Well, if you ever find Mr Right and decide to have children..." ("How about I focus on my personal life, and you focus on telling me how hereditary my rare genetic condition is? Why don't we play to our strengths, here?") I wasn't hugely offended, but I did find it a bit odd - same as with the female GP who phrased the usual "Are you sexually active?" question as "Do you have a boyfriend at the moment?" Um, there's about half a dozen reasons why those aren't quite the same question...

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

The worst doctor I ever had was a woman. But then, so have the best two doctors I've had. Including my wonderful wonderful current doctor.

I've only once had a male doctor be creepy at me. Unfortunately (and perhaps unsurprisingly) he was a gyno. Gah. *shudders* He was horrible.


When I had sexual health testing done last summer with the whole Being Actively Poly thing, I saw a very posh, polite, middle-aged male doctor who had never even heard of polyamory but worked it out from the Latin and Greek! I explained the pertinent details to him, and he was really rather approving and intrigued. :-)

[arkady.livejournal.com]

My only issue with doctors and sexuality is that all doctors seem to think asexuality needs to be "fixed". I'm quite happy being asexual and don't want to be "fixed".