To start using my Dr title everywhere?

[Fyette]

I am 35 years old, but was born with the mixed genetic blessing of always looking far younger than my actual age. I still regularly get asked for ID in pubs and even at the cinema. I have a DD and people tend to assume I am a (very) young mother.

And yes, sometimes this is nice and flattering.

But like all women, and especially young women, I seem to get patronised a lot. I especially notice it at my DDs school (and before that with the HV), or in semi-formal settings.

I have a PhD and have never used my dr title outside of work, because I don't want to seem like a twat, basically. But sometimes I feel seeming like an obnoxious twat might be preferable to having to put up with this general condescension. Perhaps if I start introducing myself as Dr Fyette I will be taken more seriously? AIBU?

(Mind you: I do not think young women without a PhD deserve to be patronised any more than I do.)

@Intheshadeoftrees - we're Dr and Ms, and I sometimes have the opposite worry! I'd rather find out a hotel/B&B was going to have a problem before I stay there. Have not had an issue but I did have one place where the (very nice) elderly couple running the B&B were obviously a bit disconcerted.

But then, I can't do much about it, as my card has to have Dr on or it wouldn't match with work bookings. I suppose I could be like a secret agent and have two entirely separate sets of ID, one for home and one for work, but for a dyslexic and absent-minded person, it does seem an awful lot of faff.

DH likes to drop his in to conversation. You should enjoy yours, you worked for it, now enjoy it!

You can have a PhD in nursing @SarahAndQuack but a PP said that a nurse who had only three years’ UG study was the same as someone doing a PhD.

I'd advise against it in certain circumstances. If it's your booked name on a flight for example you could get called to help in a medical emergency during a flight. I have a PhD, as do most of our friends, none of us use it outside work, I'm afraid it is generally thought of as a bit silly due to confusion with medical doctor and the fact it is of no use outside of your field.

I do know that you can have a PhD in nursing, and several friends have earned them.

A title isn't a mark of intellectual achievement, and I guess some vague idea it is is why this is getting some people's backs really up. 'Reverend' is a title; it isn't given because vicars are really clever, but it does tell you something about the person - like 'Dr'.

If it's your booked name on a flight for example you could get called to help in a medical emergency during a flight.

?! It's not like they're going to force you to perform a tracheotomy ('you said you were a doctor!') and nor is it like you've nicked the seat from some 'real' doctor.

I was on a flight where they asked for a doctor. A woman behind me piped up loudly with “I’m a doctor!” Shortly followed, when told a passenger had been taken ill by “of art history”. Be careful where and when you use it!!

And my point is that they should declare the doctorate, because it is good for their daughters and other young women, that they own and claim the title in recognition of their study and achievement. Regardless of the field. These are not Christmas decorations that can be bought.

I'm not a doctor but fully qualified to perform CPR including with defibrillators.

If it's your booked name on a flight for example you could get called to help in a medical emergency during a flight.

My husband has a PHD and Books his flights as 'Dr'. Last time we flew they asked on the tannoy if anyone with a medical qualification could come and see a steward (I'm a nurse so went). They didn't come and ask him. If they did he would have told them he has a PHD, wouldn't have been a big deal.

I speak to many Doctors from their home address, Consultants, Professors, medics on transplant teams, Revenue solicitors barristers, the majority don't use their title.

Solicitors and barristers in the UK don't get a title; they are Mr/Mrs/Ms (unless they have something else -- I know a solicitor who has a PhD but she works as an academic). Even if they reach the dizzy heights of Judge, they're discouraged from using that title outside work for security reasons.

Use it.

I’m a medical doctor.

I use my title.

By use i mean I put it on forms if I have to choose a title, if someone phones up asking to speak to Mrs Freak I tell them she is dead (my mother, the last Mrs Freak is dead).

However I don’t Introduce myself socially as Dr Freak.

At work I do because I’m a female anaesthetist and we are destined to be perceived as not doctors. I don’t really care but I think patients skewed perceptions that I am the nurse leads them to not listen to me properly as they are waiting to see the real doctor....and they then get quite disappointed when they don’t appear and they still have questions unanswered.

I'm in a similar position but I don't use it.

My experience is that if you aren't a medical dr, it's viewed as pretentious and in the field everyone knows you have a PhD. If they don't and have known you for a while, it's always a super point of entertainment to watch someone else tell them randomly in conversation.

Outside of the field, I never do - I feel its a bit try hard and people get cross if you aren't a medical dr on a plane.

@YouLookGood, I wasn't disputing your posts - I was taking issue with the person who said that qualifying as a nurse didn't make you the 'intellectual equal' of a PhD.

I think that's utterly patronising and nonsense. Clearly plenty of nurses are the equal to PhDs because they end up getting PhDs!

I don't personally think a PhD is about 'oh goodness, my enormous intellect'. If it were, people saying it's pretentious to use the title would have a point. It'd be like membership of MENSA or somesuch similar vanity project.

I agree with others that more women should use the title they earned with their doctorates, because it helps change people's sense of what women can do. But I don't at all think it's ok to be snobby about it, or to run down other women or female-dominated professions.

I'm an academic, my colleagues use their Dr titles for everything. Face to face you would never ask someone to call you Dr, but written down it's used all the time. It's not thought of as 'silly' at all, it's just normal.
Nobody I know has been mistaken for a medical 'Dr' if they are not medical.
So OP, use it. Why wouldn't you?

I wish I had a doctorate so I could do this!

I am also 35 and look ridiculously young. I get IDed in Tesco frequently, although never if I’m with my kids. I get patronised endlessly and it drives me up the wall. I am in a job where I am middle-level in one section but deal regularly with directors/senior management in another, and I am fed up with getting the side-eye when I speak out in meetings.

And before anyone tells me I’m delusional , I recently had an exchange with a colleague who said I was very young to have not one but two school-age children. I said I wasn’t as young as I look, and she clearly wanted to know but was too polite to ask, so I said I was 35, and she looked me up and down disbelievingly and said she’d thought I was about 23. I’m short and round-faced, that’s all.

Similar exchange with the senior manager, who is a year older than me (which I know because I looked her up on Linked In when she got the job) - she’s pregnant and asked if I’d been very young having my kids. No! I was 27 with the oldest!

It is not a boon. It is a pain in the arse. I don’t think I would mind so much if my new role didn’t mean I meet a lot of new people - in my old job everyone knew me so it didn’t matter.

I was on a flight where they asked for a doctor. A woman behind me piped up loudly with “I’m a doctor!” Shortly followed, when told a passenger had been taken ill by “of art history”. Be careful where and when you use it!!

This did not happen.

I guarantee anyone with a doctorate has heard 90 of these stories before they passed their upgrade.

I have a PhD and use my title a fair amount out of work. For most of my day to day interactions with other people, my gender and marital status are completely irrelevant and I like having a title that reveals neither.

Many years ago, with a group of small children in tow, I did have a difficult conversation at a bank - a teller informed me that he couldn't give me any info about the bank account that I was asking about because it was my husband's!

Hope there is less prejudice now.

I'm sorry I wouldn't. I would only call myself Dr if I was a medical doctor.

I know plenty of people with PHD's who don't use the title.

I agree, that did not happen.
If you have a PhD you do not think of yourself as 'a doctor'.

Why is that, @KimchiLaLa, given that medical doctors only have it as a courtesy title?

@Micah So when the man doing my MOT asks me is it’s Mrs or Miss, what do you suggest I say? Especially when “computer says no” and insists on a title. I am not Miss. I am not Mrs. I am not defined by my marital status and refuse to do so.

I have a PhD. My official title is Dr.

When 'the man doing my MOT' (I don't drive, but mutatis mutandis) asks 'is it Mrs or Miss?', I reply 'Ms'. Exactly as I did before I was married, and before I had my PhD.

'The man doing my MOT' is no more interested in my academic qualifications than he is in my marital status.

To reply 'Dr' in those circumstances is really wanky.

I use Dr only on financial documents (because it makes your cards less likely to be fraudulently used), legal documents (passports et cetera), and if I'm making a complaint to a company or organisation or writing a letter to an MP, and want to be taken as seriously as possible.

I would NEVER use Dr in a day-to-day context where there is literally no need to advertise my academic status, any more than there is to advertise my marital status. That's what 'Ms' is for.

I would not use it. I work in a field where many colleagues have PhDs, good for them. Only one or two of them use ‘Dr’ - and they are generally considered to be pretentious and silly for doing so. The vast majority of my colleagues who have phds don’t use ‘Dr’. It comes across as being a bit embarrassing/cringe making to do so. People (including those who have phds themselves) tend to poke fun a bit, eye roll.

My view is that unless you’re a medical doctor, this is purely an academic title, not for general use.

Don’t worry age will come, as unfortunately it does for us all!

oh please don't