Not sure how I feel about this way of describing a woman’s achievements

[JellySlice]

This is an article about a woman who set a new record for one of the toughest UK fell runs.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-53553760

The Bob Graham is an extremely challenging run. Dh is an experienced hill walker who took up ultra-marathons and mountain marathons 10y ago, and he won’t attempt it (but then he is 20y older than Beth Pascall).

This is the paragraph that niggles:

Pascall, who works as a paediatrician, turned her attention to training for Friday's effort when the coronavirus outbreak caused the cancellation of her long-distance running schedule in California this summer.

I get that she is more than her job, but paediatrician is a high status and an achievement of many years’ work that seems to be glossed over and diminished. Wouldn’t ‘Pascall, a Consultant Paediatrician (or Paediatric Registrar/Doctor etc) with Derbyshire NHS Trust, turned her attention to training...’ have been better?

I’m curious how reports about male doctors achieving something outside medicine describe their professions.

Yes, it's a weird turn of phrase isn't it.

I could almost understand it if it was in a running magazine - ie. they saw her being a runner as the most important thing about her, oh, and by the way, she does this with the less important, non-running bit of her life.

I wonder if it was edited? That there's something missing? Pascall, who trained as a heart surgeon but works as a paediatrician (obvs. heart surgeon not a realistic example)

Certainly it's minimising it.

Perhaps it was lifted from an enthusiast magazine. Some of the writing is quite amateurishly lumpen.

Pascall, who works as a paediatrician...

Next paragraph:

... said the 32-year-old, who lives in Belper, Derbyshire.

said the 32-year-old, who lives in Belper, Derbyshire

Sounds like local newspaper journalese.

Dr Pascall was interviewed by Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour. She also mentioned that she works as a pediatrician, but no details of her professional career we're mentioned, and she was introduced as Beth Pascall, without the title 'Dr'. Meanwhile, another guest was introduced in as 'Dr Nicola Rawlinson, a performance psychologst' even though she is a PhD student and a physiologist; not a doctor or a psychologist. Beth Pascall could have been described as 'a junior doctor specialising in pediatrics', but I don't think there's anything sexist about describing her as 'working as a pediatrician', and I don't see any reason to believe that a man would have been treated differently.

On her own website, she says "When I’m not out running in the hills I work as junior doctor specialising in paediatrics."

Hmm, well, I actually prefer this wording to referring to her (anyone, really) as "an X (paediatrician/lawyer/teacher/whatever)", when X is irrelevant to the context.
But I agree it might be less likely wording for a man. However, if it is, then perhaps this is one example of a woman being viewed more as a human than a man might be? Conjectural, of course...

@RoyalCorgi

On her own website, she says "When I’m not out running in the hills I work as junior doctor specialising in paediatrics."

So sounds like working in Paris is her own description, perhaps because she's a junior doctor who isn't fully settled on where she wants to end up? I mean if they'd described her as working at the local hospital I'd see the point but...

On her own website, she says "When I’m not out running in the hills I work as junior doctor specialising in paediatrics."

It makes total sense in that sentence though - it flows because she's talking about how she spends her time.

Whereas the article is titled 'Ultrarunner Beth Pascall' and further says 'An ultrarunner has....' so they're happing saying she is and ultra-runner but not that she is a paediatrician, or is a junior doctor.

I agree that they probably lifted the wording from her website and clumsily didn't think how it flowed with the rest of the article though, that is the most likely explanation.

Searching for ultrarunner on the BBC give me:

Cliff Young - Potato Farmer and Ultrarunner

and

Blind Cork runner Sinead Kane will compete for Ireland [....] A qualified solicitor, Kane achieved the required standard for the championships when she ran 204.5km in a 24-hour race in Crawley in April.

But I'm still inclined to think this was just a new journalist who's not got their style ironed out yet.

The closest comparison I can think of is Andrew Murray, who runs ultramarathons: on the BBC he's just described as 'Dr Andrew Murray', 'the GP', etc.