Gym thinks only men can be Drs

[DrElizabethPlimpton]

I've just seen a link to a Daily Fail article (I won't link obviously) about a gym in Cambridgeshire

A paediatrician joined and she found that her electronic key wouldn't allow her access to the female changing room. The 'glitch' was explained by staff - apparently her title Dr automatically defaulted to the assumption she was male.
I'm currently speechless.

[Sidge]

I saw this and was just flabbergasted.

[DrElizabethPlimpton]

Sometimes I feel we are still in the 1970's.

[MewlingQuim]

Good grief

[partialderivative]

So, even the DM could see how eye-wateringly dreadful such a policy was!

[iklboo]

Wildly clutching at straws - but could it be a software issue & staff haven't bothered to manually input the doctor's gender or realised that they had to(a lot of sites unfortunately are 'default male')?

[PuffinsAreFictitious]

Things must be bad if the Daily Hate can see the female pov

[fakenamefornow]

I can't imagine that this could be anything other than a mistake, who in their right mind would program it like that. For this reason I can't get excited about it.

This isn't to say that sexism isn't ingrained in us. I have a job visiting businesses about student placements, I don't meet the students, and I really have to try hard to stop myself making assumptions about the gender of the student according to the type of business placement. For example, when visiting a nursery I default to 'she' or in a garage 'he' when referring to the student. Perhaps even more telling though is that when I do do this, I've never yet been wrong with the gender.

[anothernumberone]

Okay it is ghastly but I am always a little when people use Dr outside of work. None of my doctor friends ever do only a friend with a PhD does.

[Hulababy]

I assume it is a software glitch and that the software was bought in. As it has only just come up it must be the first time the gym have had this issue - either due to having no other female member registered as Dr, or it could be that the staff entering the data missed a tick box to assign female to the key (though according to the gyms response this is less likely)

If a software issue it is a glitch made by the programmer.

[JeanneTheRabidFeminist]

Yes, it would be lovely to think it's just a glitch.

But - and bearing in mind I have had my Dr title for all of 18 months, have never changed my cards over, and very rarely use it - so far, I've had approximately, ooh, 100-200 emails assuming I am a male dr.

These are not spam emails. They are emails that come to my account from people who sincerely believe, based on my name and initial and the fact I have a doctorate, that I must be a man.

It is bizarre.

[DadWasHere]

Interesting to me because I used to work in human interface design in software. Two competing goals go on, speed of data entry Vs accuracy of data entry. So a lot of data entry programs assign default values (speed) and rely on operators to over-ride those values in situations where it does not apply (accuracy). If I look at this:

www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/departments-and-divisions/department-of-education/Documents/women_med_demographics.pdf

I would say that any current software would be poorly designed if it assigned a default gender to Dr, but moving back further into the past that would not be the case. Moving further into the future, if current trends continue based off those tables, good design may eventually assign female as the default gender to Dr.

[JeanneTheRabidFeminist]

That's a very narrow view of poor design, surely?

[DadWasHere]

That's a very narrow view of poor design, surely?

There were different ways to look at it back when I did it and thinking may have changed since then. Validity of having a default value which was generally statistically driven, level of hazard of potential error, and errors in data entry caused by uncorrected default values Vs errors if the user was required to enter a value but made a mistake. For example in what kim147 wrote, just because you have an option of clicking Doctor – Male or Doctor – Female on a data entry screen does not mean the operator is going to click the correct one without fail. I saw one database that used the first name of the client to check its own database for probability of correct gender to alert the operator of possible incorrect entry. Ultimately if gender is incorrect the client is either in a position of being annoyed at the operator making the incorrect entry or at the software assigning default gender the operator did not pick up on.

[JeanneTheRabidFeminist]

But why used gendered statistics at all?

Forgive me, but surely that is outdated and extremely simplistic?

It is not a fault in the capacity of the programme, but in the hidebound interpretations of people using it.

[DadWasHere]

Forgive me, but surely that is outdated and extremely simplistic?

Its stupid by design IMO. The best way to program it is to require gender first, then be presented with a menu that allows you to select the honorific for the person, of which Dr would be an option for both men and women. The bonus to that is that if the user selects (or is given by default) the wrong gender the fact that Mr Vs Mrs (or Mz) shows up in the next entry option easily flags to the user they got the previous entry about gender wrong. But its seldom done that way because defining gender first rather than honorific of the person seems impersonal.

[Trills]

When buying a wedding present from John Lewis online, you are asked to tell them if you are male or female.

I cannot figure out why.

[DrDiva]

I use my dr title because I do not like the marriage assumptions made with the alternatives of mrs/miss/ and even ms. I've posted on here before about being told it is a crime for me to use my husband's bank card...

[EBearhug]

In this case, I took it that the reason to record gender is so that access is given to the doors for only male or female changing rooms, but not both. (It could be argued that just having access and then allowing people to take their choice by the sign on the door would work as well as it does in many, many places. Just because you can be techy doesn’t always mean you have to.)

Also, given the numbers of men and women working in tech, there could easily be sexist assumptions behind the programming, given the stuff some of them unthinkingly come out with in a day-to-day context. (Our HR systems had to be reprogrammed for a trans person, because no one had ever considered you might not always be M or F as you were born.)

[pinkyredrose]

another your friend with the PhD IS one of your friends who's a doctor!

[PlumpingIsQuiteUpForThud]

Okay it is ghastly but I am always a little hmm when people use Dr outside of work. None of my doctor friends ever do only a friend with a PhD does.

Hey, I do this (PhD). I'm not a dick about it; it just makes me smile every time I look at my bank card and think that the six years I spent crying and coaxing bacteria to replicate wasn't in vain. It's not like I go 'I AM A DOCTOR DONTCHA KNOW' to people. I just like using the title, because it reminds me that I earned it. I wonder why medics don't?

Anyway, digression. Stupid database system.

[AnnieLobeseder]

Another one who uses my title. Yes, okay, it's new and shiny, but I'm also of the opinion that stupid situations like the one described above are going to keep happening unless we female Drs get ourselves out there and noticed as being just as common as male Drs.

And male being the default for everything (when they actually form less then half the population) is the basis of so much of what is wrong with society and why feminism is still so badly needed.