Sex and Power - Women remain seriously under-represented in senior positions

Sex and power

Extract from the report:

"A "sex and power" survey of women in senior positions across the public and private sector in Britain says that 30 years after the Sex and Discrimination Act, women should be sharing power more equally."

Well I've got a good idea to help with this problem: We need sexist attitudes to be eradicated from healthcare provision, ideally by meticulously thought-out legislation, banning medical sexist discrimination by statute. If women were to be treated with the same care and concern as men are by doctors and their retinues, then their health would be much better and that would remove one unnecessary obstacle to their advancement in the workplace.

In the '90s, Sheena McDonald presented television programmes about this, and The Times national newspaper carried detailed and serious articles highlighting with statistics and with personal testimonies the demeaning attitudes encountered by women patients consulting doctors, in contrast to male patients consulting them with the same symptoms. Men were much more likely to be taken seriously and to be examined and sent for tests; women were more likely to be considered to be exaggerating their symptoms or imagining them, and to be offered 'reassurance' or worse, and sent away, possibly with anti-depressants. There were, of course, grave consequences to this medical malpractice.

How we laughed - ruefully - when a typical greeting was parodied! - To a male patient: "Good morning. And what is the matter?" - To a woman patient: "Good morning. And what seems to be the matter?" - But the parody is still all too close to the truth, and the humour is all too black and all too many women are harmed by this nonsense...)o:

And if you think that sex discrimination in medical services is within the remit of the Equal Opportunities Commission, amazingly, you are wrong! - I brought up the matter with them in Manchester years ago and was told that although they do hear from women who know themselves to have received poor treatment from health professionals because of what I could these days call institutional sex prejudice, they cannot assist because medical services are outside their terms of reference.