Female Doctors Launch Campaign Against Sexual Harassment In UK Healthcare

Female doctors have started an online campaign they claim reveals appalling sexual assault, harassment, and gender-based discrimination in the medical field.

The campaign’s creators, Becky Cox and Chelcie Jewitt, assert that surviving in scrubs is a problem for all healthcare professionals and call on women to share their experiences of harassment and abuse in order to “push for change and to reach the people in power.”

The campaign demanded that the General Medical Council (GMC), which oversees physicians, publicly condemn behaviour that is discriminatory and misogynistic toward female coworkers and “treat them with respect.”

“Unfortunately, a lot of the behaviours have been accepted as normal. Many healthcare professionals are unaware that they constitute an issue, according to Jewitt.

She said, “I don’t know anyone who hasn’t, to be honest with you,” when asked if she has encountered harassment and abuse at work.

Her decision to pursue a profession in emergency medicine was once questioned, but now she uses the experiences as motivation for the campaign.

The campaign’s website has received over 40 accounts, ranging from sexual harassment by patients to offensive comments and advances by superiors.

The campaign is supported by data showing that 91% of female respondents have encountered sexism at work within the previous two years. The British Medical Association revealed the results of a poll of approximately 2,500 doctors working for the NHS, the majority of whom were women, in a report in 2021. (BMA).

According to the study, 84% of respondents agreed that there is sexism in the medical field, and 61% of women claimed they were discouraged from choosing a certain speciality because of their gender.

The campaign stated on Twitter that sexism in the healthcare workforce is intersectional. The BMA report did not go into detail about the cumulative ways that racism and classism combine with other forms of discrimination. A variety of experiences are influenced by factors such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Sexism is not an isolated phenomenon.

Source: The Guardian

Edited by Kalpana Pokhriyal