Am I the only Women who doesn't like to see a Women Doctor?

I am in a subsection of my speciality where men very much outnumber women (traditionally a rather "macho" area wthin my speciality), and I was the first woman consultant in the unit (and in fact in the geographical area) in which I work. In the fourteen years isnce then I am pleased to say that a lot more women are coming in. Why this is I am not sure, but it is certainly a welcome development.

Sorry about typos, a toddler was on my lap!

Fully agree with WrongbutWromatic. I really truly not not belive that there is a gender bias in cosultant appointment panels (well certainly not in my speciality anyway).

If I really wanted power I would not be doing what I do but would seek positions as a clinical or medical director, with the Royal College etc. What I choose to do is actually look after patients. Of course I have clinical freedom to a degree but as said above, we work within the NHS power structure and a lot of what we have to do is fully dictated by NHS policies. There's not much real power in it, apart, hopefully from the power to help your patinets to the best of your ability.

Just to note, I did not take maternity leave when I was young and learning the ropes but after I had already been a consultant for ten years! I did only take three months though as I could not afford to take any more. It worked out fine though. I expressed milk at work for nearly two years so was able to continue breast feeding, and everything worked out fine with childcare, because I could afford a nanny and my DH was able to care for the baby too. I can't see that I have been disadvantaged in any way.

I'm a woman doctor, training in hospital medicine. Agree that consultant hiring decisions are very nearly gender-blind, and the NHS appears very benign towards us as women compared to many other employers. A few months' maternity leave, when you are young and still learning the ropes anyway, is small beer compared to 25 years of hard graft working for a NHS Trust. (The maternity leave issue can be a bigger problem for female GP partners, but that's another story).

Yes, the specialities with anti social hours (often more prestigious too) are still rather male dominated with often very macho, inflexible cultures, and women tend to vote with their feet as theDudesmummy implies. But many other specialities, often with less acute/out of hours work (but not always - eg paeds), are now actually female-dominated at consultant level. In my own happy, friendly speciality it's probably about 50:50, which is nice.

It's not all about hiring decisions, of course: there are many other, more subtle issues affecting woman consultants that can make their lives harder, but most of those relate to society as a whole, not a problem of the NHS as such.

Mind you, you have to remember the consultants do not hold the power in the NHS, not really. Consultants just deliver the service. That word says it all: towards patients, we really do consider ourselves servants; it is hard for us to imagine actually setting out to oppress the people we are trying to help.

Amongst ourselves doctors can be intensely competitive. Any consultant who really wants to go on a power-trip will be seeking out the real positions of power and influence. These positions - eg senior Trust positions, royal college positions, research professorships, deans of medical schools, learned society presidencies, writers of reports for the Govt and influencers of policy at national level - are still very much the domain of the "old white men".

Not everyone is suited to the life of a consultant (the hours, the level of responsibility and stress, the on-call committments etc). That goes for both sexes but it seems women do find it on the whole less attractive. I wouldn't judge anyone for that. It suits me (well, my particular job suits me) and presumably the other women I work with, but I can see how it would not be for everyone.

It is a lifestyle choice for our family, I work, my DH does not. I spend most of my time working and I make a good living. He does childcare, cooking and lots else around the place. The rest of the housework etc is done by a nanny and cleaner, paid for by by my work. That's our choice of lifestyle at present. No-one has forced us into being this way, it's how we wnat it right now.

'Lifestyle choices'

Where I work nearly all the female consultants, including myself, have taken time off for maternity leave and there have been no problems about that. I think the relative lack of female consultants is more to do with women's lifetsyle choices rather than discrimination. I work in a unit with seventeen consultants, six are female.

I really don't agree with that Narked (speaking as a woman doctor, of childbearing age, who also interviews for junior staff). I experience it as a level playing field.

The difference is that there is no compulsion. And the qualified women are there. Every woman of child bearing age has to be better than the male candidates to get the job - not equal, better - to overcome the assumption that she'll be taking time off work to have DC. Why pretend it's a level playing field?

"It's not a quota. It's not 'positive discrimination'. It's expressing a desire to see a woman so that hospitals and surgeries are aware that there is a demand for women doctors."

What's the difference?

I have to say that I find your theory on female doctors completely unfounded and the parallels with oppression and institutionalised abuse completely out of place.

I have seen dozens of doctors, hcps and mental health professionals at work because I have worked as an interpreter. I have witnessed no trend for female doctors etc to be arrogant, dismissive, oppressive....there's thorough and not so, empathic and not so etc. in both sexes.

I have certainly noticed that, these days, a GP is as likely to be female as male in the surgeries I go to and more and more female practitioners are working with hospital consultant led teams, still quite rare to meet a female consultant.

I also interpret a lot on therapy sessions. I think you could have a fascinating time dissecting why you react with such strong feelings of vulnerability when in contact with female doctors.

A lot of women doctors become GPs. Partly because of the opportunity for flexible working, but also because surgeries have actively sought out women doctors. They know a percentage of their patients would prefer to have a woman doctor available for at least some issues, and as a result even small practices tend to have at least one woman GP working there.

Imagine what could happen if we expressed our preference when it came to doctors generally.

Mini post Mon 12.50pm
Your last couple of lines are quite alarming.
Choosing maybe not to have treatment because of this problem,could at some point put your health in danger.
Perhaps you could talk to people in your RL to shed some light on the problem.
I wouldnt want anything to happen to you Mini!

""when medicine was male dominated it was all so bad for women" Is it no longer male dominated then? The culture certainly seems quite male to me.

DH recruits Drs to train as GPs and says that currently the recruits are 75% female so it's looking like it certainly won't be a male dominated profession in the future - no idea about hospitals Drs though.

It's not a quota. It's not 'positive discrimination'. It's expressing a desire to see a woman so that hospitals and surgeries are aware that there is a demand for women doctors. It's not like there's a shortage of excellent women candidates yet women are still outnumbered by men when it comes to senior positions in medicine.

Women of child bearing age face discrimination when it comes to employment simply because they have wombs. It's ridiculous to pretend it's a level playing field.

My mother dislikes having a female doctor. She had lousy experiences with female gynaecologists and a recent missed diagnosis for over a year (I think, but I'm not a medic) from a female GP, resulting in some not very successful (I think because late) surgery.

Yes, OP, I think in some cases you are right, although I found your original post quite hard to take (why? not sure). I think an undergroup will always police itself and its behaviour very fiercely as members of the undergroup are fighting for reduced 'pickings' from the overgroup. Meanwhile the members of the overgroup can be tremendously nice and lovely to those members of the undergroup who make it through. This would fit with male consultants being very nice to female patients who get referred, with female GPs being the gatekeepers and being a lot brusquer with their patients as they will be accused of being soft or referring inappropriately if they send too many 'worried well' women to the clinic.

In a similar way, articles about A-list celebrities will frequently go on about how NICE they are and how much they want to spend time with their fans/reveal all about their private lives, but their nasty PR won't let them. Ha ha. Get powerful enough, and you can delegate the being nasty function to someone else.

There is quite a lot of writing about how women are judged as nastier if they speak and behave like men in the same field - there is a fine line to be trod.

Having said all that... I still think, if you are the common factor in a situation where the same result keeps happening, you need to consider your own approach first. Maybe have a think about how you are approaching GPs and whether you can do anything to make the relationship work better? Because ultimately you are the person who suffers if that relationship is a bit kack.

Our current woman GP is absolutely lovely.And I specifically went to her for migraine problems, as I thought she would understand "headaches" better.She was brill.fwiw,she is married to a male doctor there and he is good too.
But there has also been a previous woman GP at the surgery who I actually reported. I suspect others reported her too. She was fired 6 months later. No idea whether she was trying to exert power over me. I suspect not . She didnt like doing out of hours work,so I dont think she endeared herself to patients or colleagues.

I don't care whether they are male female or any other gender - I want them to fix me or tell me how to fix myself - then I am happy.

"It's a lot better than it was and not as good as it should be. The more women employed the more things will change. "

Employing women just because they're women is hurting the cause more than it helps - as it means women are constantly getting an implicit "you only got that job because you're a woman, not because you earned it". Quotas are a bad thing, positive discrimination is a bad thing, it doesn't change attitudes for the better.

Also, just because someone is a woman it doesn't mean that she neccessarily has women's wellfare more at heart than a man would.

I have absolutely no preference either way and would not even consider asking for a female gp if it was for a smear. I just take who I get. Almost all of the GPs at our practice are slightly incompetent in my experience, male or female.

However, 2 atrocious female dentists have left me with an irrational fear and I will only see male dentists.

It's a lot better than it was and not as good as it should be. The more women employed the more things will change.

I'm not in the least bothered about the gender of the doctor-as long as they are good I can't see it matters.