Survey: Most female gynecologic oncologists have faced workplace bullying, harassment
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Most female gynecologic oncologists who responded to an internet-based survey reported having experienced workplace bullying, according to a presentation at the virtual Society of Gynecologic Oncology Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer.
Participants in the monthlong survey also reported high rates of sex discrimination and microaggressions, regardless of immediate leadership’s characteristics.
“The take-home message of our research is twofold: we must address equity in our workforce as a next step toward creating equity for the patients that we care for, and creating safe and productive workspaces where women are able to thrive must be intentional,” Sarah M. Temkin, MD, former director of gynecologic oncology at Anne Arundel Medical Center, told Healio. “We cannot just place women into leadership positions and think that that's going to fix the problem. We need transparency in our metrics, communications and advancement. And these factors all need to be gender-neutral in order for women to be successful in surgical spaces. Leadership and advancement must be transparent and merit-based.”
Temkin and colleagues sought to find out whether characteristics of leadership and department infrastructure affect the work environment for female gynecologic oncologists.
The researchers surveyed members of the Facebook group “Women of Gynecologic Oncology,” which includes female gynecologic oncologists and fellows in training. More than half (53%; n = 250) of the group’s 472 members responded between July 20 and Aug. 19, 2020. Most respondents were aged younger than 50 years (93.6%), white (82.2%), non-Hispanic (94.3%), married (84.7%) and had children (75.2%). Practice environments included academic (61%), hospital employment (22.9%) and private practice (12.4%).
The majority (60%) reported to a man as department chair, and 56.7% had a male division director.
Poll respondents provided demographics, practice infrastructure and personal experiences with workplace bullying, sex discrimination and microaggressions, as well as outcome effects, through a REDcap survey platform. Researchers used descriptive statistics to summarize data and chi-squared tests to compare work environments by leadership and departmental infrastructure characteristics.
Results showed 52.8% of survey participants reported having experienced workplace bullying. Among them, 76.3% reported they faced such bullying in training and 61.8% indicated that it occurred in practice.
Most (83.8%) reported that a colleague with authority perpetrated the bullying; perpetrators included staff/nurses (40%), colleagues at the women’s level (25.4%), patients (24.6%), hospital administrators (17.7%) and trainees (16.2%). Men accounted for 46.6% of perpetrators, although 34.4% of survey participants indicated the bullying was equally distributed between sexes.
Twenty-four women reported they changed jobs because of bullying.
The majority of respondents (57%) also reported having experienced sex discrimination, most often from colleagues with authority (77.1%), men (74.5%) and during training (78.9%). More than half (64.8%) also reported sex discrimination taking place in practice. Perpetrators included patients (43.6%), staff/nurses (41.4%), colleagues at the women’s level (35%), hospital administrators (16.4%) and trainees (9.3%).
Nineteen women admitted changing jobs due to sex discrimination.
Eighty-three percent of women surveyed reported experiencing microaggressions. Among these women, 30.9% indicated that they had been told to smile more (59.7% by colleagues with authority); 19.7% to dress a certain way (72.9% by colleagues with authority); and 16.1% to act more female, nurturing and/or motherly (72.5% by colleagues with authority).
In addition, 41.9% of women reported they pretended to be interested in an activity, such as a sport, to feel included in conversation or an event outside work, and 56.6% admitted to hiding personal life details or changing their personality in order to adapt to their work environment.
Researchers observed no statistically significant associations of bullying, sex discrimination or microaggressions with sex of the department chair or division director, the specialty, or the department reporting structure.
“This is experienced by women in the workforce where they constitute the majority and, interestingly, the incidents of bullying, gender discrimination and microaggression did not really coordinate with the gender of their supervising leadership,” abstract co-author Linda J. Hong, MD, of the department of obstetrics and gynecology and gynecologic oncology at Loma Linda University Health, said in a Society of Gynecologic Oncology video.
“The cancer care community can assess itself for how and why women leave academics and leave medicine altogether,” said Temkin, who added that she is no longer practicing because of her own experiences with discrimination and harassment.
“The cancer care community can assess the way that funding and resources are distributed and ensure that these are distributed in a fair and equitable way such that all patients can receive the support they need,” she added. “Lastly, our communities can all raise their expectations of ourselves and each other. By holding ourselves to higher standards we can improve the environments for us all and thereby improve the care for our patients.”
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Temkin SM, et al. Abstract 10910. Presented at: Society of Gynecologic Oncology Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer (virtual meeting); March 19-25, 2021.
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