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Original poster

Gym thinks only men can be Drs

363 replies

DrElizabethPlimpton · 18/03/2015 18:21

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.

OP posts:
DadWasHere · 18/03/2015 22:15

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 · 18/03/2015 21:55

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.

kim147 · 18/03/2015 21:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Hulababy · 18/03/2015 21:00

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.

anothernumberone · 18/03/2015 20:55

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.

kim147 · 18/03/2015 20:49

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

fakenamefornow · 18/03/2015 18:56

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.

PuffinsAreFictitious · 18/03/2015 18:47

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

iklboo · 18/03/2015 18:44

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')?

partialderivative · 18/03/2015 18:40

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

MewlingQuim · 18/03/2015 18:31

Good grief Shock

Original poster
DrElizabethPlimpton · 18/03/2015 18:28

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

OP posts:
Sidge · 18/03/2015 18:25

I saw this and was just flabbergasted.