Oncologist urges peers to share their stories of gender discrimination, harassment
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As physicians and leaders in health care continue to work toward gender equity in a system that often allows harassment to go unchecked, Erica C. Kaye, MD, MPH, issued a call to action for individuals to share their unheard stories.
“Gender equity in medicine won’t materialize until mainstream dialogue is overrun with stories about sexism, forcing a reckoning that begins with accountability and evolves into a culture of zero tolerance,” Kaye, a pediatric oncologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, wrote in a perspective published in The New England Journal of Medicine. “One story can be discounted as an outlier. But waves upon waves of stories, saturating the airspace and literature and seeping into institutional dialogue, compels action.”
Following publication of the perspective, titled “Misogyny in Medicine,” Kaye received a tremendous response on social media, with many women and men supporting such a call to action. She spoke with Healio about her reaction to the response, the disconnect in conversations about gender equity in medicine, and ways women can find their voice and share their stories.
Healio: What did it mean for you to get this essay published?
Kaye: I write in the essay that this story is “boring old news” for women in science and medicine. I’m not saying this facetiously, because these conversations happen very quietly and off the record all the time. The problem is that they lack credibility without the stamp of approval by those entities that have been historically designated as most reputable. When a topic is published in a journal that has the reputation and reach of The New England Journal of Medicine, there is an immediate legitimization of the language and content in a way that, to me, sometimes feels unfair and disingenuous. Yet, at the same time, I appreciate the weight and momentum of that platform. It’s sad that this topic is “boring old news” and that nothing I said in my article is novel — and at the same time, I recognize that it’s a big deal for The New England Journal of Medicine to recognize the import of the message and lend its platform to disseminating this content. I think that recognition may be what so many people reacted to in social media and in real life; it’s not only validation of what they already knew and felt themselves, but the immediacy of feeling seen by an entity that is respected on an international stage.
Healio: What factors may go unnoticed in the conversation about improving gender equity?
Kaye: I think this boils down to one’s own lived experience. The reality is that across science and medicine, the people who sit at decision-making tables — who create the rules and policies that invariably shape the culture and daily interactions within an institution — are largely white and male. White men in science and medicine often have different lived experiences than women and people of color. I think that in most cases and in my experience, the people sitting at the table have good intentions. There will always be outliers and individuals who are overtly or covertly sexist or racist, but I would like to believe that most people want to be part of the solution. However, the system itself is currently not incentivized to elevate, emphasize or even hear the lived experiences of women and people of color in science and medicine. When you have a disproportionate number of individuals at decision-making tables — who control the culture of an institution and all that trickles down — who don’t understand the lived experiences of women and people of color, it’s difficult to have conversations about solving the problem. This creates a profound disconnect across a multitude of different topics, including equity.
Healio: Do you have advice for women on how to find their voice and share their story?
Kaye: There is no blanket advice or mantra that will feel organic or empowering for everyone. I have been overwhelmed in the weeks since the article came out by the number of women coming to me and sharing their stories. I didn’t adequately prepare emotionally for the secondary trauma in this context. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. In this call to action, where I asked for the stories of people who are extremely disempowered — who exist in a culture where they do not feel heard or safe — to share their stories, it’s natural that one’s first step might be to reach out to the person who has role-modeled it. It has been very overwhelming for me, because I am absorbing an enormous amount of grief and trauma from other people, some of whom I know and some of whom are complete strangers. But, it is an important and necessary first step, so I would encourage people who are holding stories or living these experiences to reach out to anyone in whom they feel they can trust — colleagues, friends, family — or even strangers whose voices have resonated with your lived experience.
Our voices have so much more power than we recognize. It’s scary to be a singular voice and it’s normal to feel insecure or unsafe in that process because, as I said in the essay, one voice is easily discounted or silenced. However, in aggregate, our voices carry a lot of weight. It requires us to have trust not only in ourselves and our stories, but in our peers and colleagues, because if we can trust each other and come together, I genuinely believe we can fundamentally change the system. We can become a deafening roar that is impossible to ignore.
For more information:
Erica C. Kaye, MD, MPH, can be reached at erica.kaye@stjude.org.
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