April 20, 2011 • 18 mins
Ever since women started becoming doctors, studies have scrutinized genders and doctoring styles. Women may spend more time with patients and communicate more easily with them, but that's not the whole story. Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From house top works dot com. Hello and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Christmas is
our third in a series that kind of started accidentally. Yeah.
(00:24):
First we talked about nurses, nurses, We talked about midwives
and doler midwives and news, and now we're gonna talk
about female doctor female doctors. But we're not talking about
female doctors as in guinea colleges, although we will mention
guy to college. You know, I was actually going to
ask you a question to kick things off about a
guy in college. Okay, as a lady yourself, Kristen deb
would be me with lady part I do have a vagina?
(00:46):
Would you go see a male gynecologist? You know? If I, um, yeah,
yeah I would. I would. Would you think twice about it?
I mean, if you had your choice, who would you take?
I would take it. I would take a female doctor,
but I would be I'm more open to going to
a male kind o now than I was when I was,
say eighteen. Yeah, you know, because at first you don't
(01:06):
you know, maybe you're a little more us, a little
more squeamish about you know, stirrups and plus a male
in front of that. Yeah, I mean it's so awkward. Maybe. Yeah,
it can be traumatic to go to the kind of
colleges for the first time. Um, But then it gets easier.
Ladies out there, don't be I know plenty of I
know plenty of women who go to male kind of
(01:27):
collegists and they have no problem. Yeah. And so I
thought that would sort of be when we started researching
doctors who are women. I thought that'd be kind of
the main field where you'd see a lot of women
that you know, people who you know, specifically women When
I talk about people women who had lady parts might
want to see someone who also had a lady part,
women who had lady parts. Yeah, uh yeah, it's early. Um.
(01:48):
But then there's this really interesting study, uh that was
that found that yes, a lot of women would have
the preference for a female kind of cologists, the majority would.
But then even the women who had a lot of
people's said they had no preference. But then even the
woman who said they had a preference for a female
guydacologist went and saw a male GYDA cocologist and experienced
the same level of satisfaction with their appointment, right, because
(02:09):
they were most concerned. All the people in in this
study were most concerned with experience and capability before gender. Yeah,
so you know, that's sort of I think one of
the main things people can think of where they might
want a doctor in particular gender, and this study sort
of showed that. Yeah, it's on people's mind, but not
really because you and I and we will not go
(02:30):
into detail here, but I know for a fact that
you and I have both gone to female lady doctors
and had just bananas kind of experiences. So it's certainly
not it's not the gender of the doctor. Now you
can have a lady GUYDA cologist who will who will
freak you out. But like I said, no, no details, um,
(02:52):
but I do want to revisit one one little topic
before we move forward with this that we touched on
in the nursing podcasts. Because in the nursing podcast in
case you all don't recall, it was focused on while
nurse why nursing is typically a female profession as supposed
to a male profession, and it goes back to this
(03:12):
Victorian idea that was really promoted by Florence Nightingale of
the medical family as a family, the doctor is the father,
the wife is the nurse, and then the child is
the patient. So you have, you know, this male paternal
doctor figure. So now we've kind of worked our way
up up the wrongs. We're going to talk about the
(03:34):
differences between male and female doctors because there are now
just as many men as women coming out of medical school, right,
but what is the difference between them? Pretty much as
soon as these women started graduate from medical school and
entering practices, researchers were like, what's the delia, what's gonna
There's got to be a difference. So it's it's actually
(03:55):
been pretty widely studied, and uh, it comes down to
these things we always talk about as these stereotypically female
trait right, that might make women not better doctors, but
different doctors, because for instance, you know, female doctors will
typically prefer to wear hot pink scrubs um and carry
their purses in the operating room with them. They like
(04:18):
designer scalpels, whereas men will just go to costco. Yeah,
that extra attention to detail, that women can bring their
shopping skills really help them in the emergency. Yeah it does, Yeah,
Kristen jokes, of course they aren't. But those sort of
stereotypically things. How many times we said that women are
better communicators? Too many times? Then I would that I
(04:40):
would care to count. I was actually thinking about this
as I was reading all this research of just over
and over again. If you look at studies on gender differences,
women communicate, they're like mothers, even if they're not your mother.
Men might not take as much time to speak with you,
but they are thinking in their heads, whereas we they
were thinking with their vows and hands. That doesn't make sense,
(05:03):
It kind of does that. I mean, that's what it
comes down to, you, for better for worse, that this
idea that these womanly traits can affect your experience at
the doctor who are bedside manner. So, yeah, there are
tons of studies about women communicating better, women taking a
little bit more time with each patient. Um. But you
(05:23):
know what's kind of funny is once you start to
look at some specific diagnoses that doctors can make, that's
when it starts to break down a little bit. Yeah,
let's start with something a little more intuitive with plastic surgery.
Around of plastic surgery patients in the US for cosmetic
plastic surgery, especially women, and what are we gonna get done?
(05:46):
Probably our boobs, So they might need to get bigger,
they might need to get smaller. You might have had
breast cancer and need to reconstruct them. Right, So those
are some options, And women will say that female plastic
surgeons might not be so quick to make a judgment
of like, okay, all right, you want to go bigger,
(06:08):
let's go big. I need to go small. Let's be
a wad as small, whereas women might just want something
a little more just in the middle. And female plastic
surgeons who have possessed breasts of their own and have
grown up with the experience of of having breasts might
take a little more time and figure out what that
patient really needs and tailor at a little a little
(06:29):
better than a male doctor, not saying that the the
outcome will be any worse like that. There men and
women aren't aren't as good technically, But yeah, they're saying
that the woman will actually listen to what you want.
But again, I think this will come down to individual doctors.
They're really great. Male plastic surgeons on betting, just as
there might be really crappy female plastic surgeons. It's it
(06:51):
can be very subjective once you get right down to it.
But let's let's turn in to another medical conundrum, Christian
heart disease. Heart disease. Coronary heart disease is typically referred
to as an illness of older men. Yes, and that
would be wrong. But that would be wrong. Why would
(07:12):
it be wrong because when they get it too, Yeah,
it's like weird, doctor's right, the doctor is in So yeah,
typically um considered an illness older men, but it is
a little bit harder to diagnose in women, which is
why it's typically associated with older men, just because it's
(07:35):
easier to spot in them. But when it comes to
spotting coronary heart disease, the gender of the doctor seems
to make a little bit of a difference, at least
according to this one study that was reported on in
the New York Times in two thousand and seven. But
not in the way you think. You think that maybe
(07:55):
a female doctor, knowing that this is a little harder spot,
would be more attuned to those little hints that could
indicate the heart disease. But no, they found out that
actually the female doctors when diagnosing the female patients male patients,
everyone could spot the signs, but female doctors were likely
to overlook the biggest risk factor for heart disease, which
(08:17):
was age. All the male doctors when they looked at
the female patient considered the age, whereas the female doctors
sort of forgot about age and looked at all these
other clues and thus we're um not as good at
diagnosing the heart disease. So it's an example. I mean,
you can find one that proves that women can be better,
the plastic surgery example. You can find another study that
says the men have got it going on the heart
(08:38):
disease things. So again, it's not like anyone's better. It's
not like anyone's better. And we should make a point
that it's not like all the study methodologies looking at
these gender differences between doctors are locked tight either. Because
there were some complaints about this study on coronary heart
(08:58):
disease that at the doctors involved, there were a hundred
and twelve male and female primary care doctors who were
just watching videotapes of professional actors portraying patients with symptoms
of heart disease. So the dot perfect right, And so
some doctors were saying, who were commenting on the study,
(09:20):
were saying, hey, you know what this would change if
they were actually, if that was a real patient in
a real waiting room. I think that the results would
be different. You need to replicate these kind of findings.
And you know, even the studies that are based on
a patient's preference, because a lot of people say it's
not so much the doctor's gender, but the patient's preference
for a certain gender. That's all based on you know,
a survey and what the patients saying. And even if
(09:43):
the study is anonymous and randomized, maybe some patients don't
want to say, you know, straight out that they prefer
one gender or the other. There's really no way to
know how all these studies are going UM in terms
of these methodologies. But one thing we can say is
that whether they're different, whether they're better, whether or they
are worse, women certainly are changing the faith of modern medicine.
(10:04):
They are, and they're making it a much prettier one.
Their features and Joel lines and those no, I'm talking
about their working hours, Kristen, Yes, this is true, UM,
Women physicians typically don't want to have that constant on
call schedule. They will want to pick a little more
(10:28):
family friendly schedules. Um For instance, there was a gynecologist,
Natalie Feldman, who was saying that women physicians have helped
make it more acceptable for both genders to try to
strike a balance between work and family life. And she said, quote,
the new generation is much less driven to work long hours.
They're gonna want to go into emergency medicine or anesthesia
(10:50):
where you have to work, but they're not on call
right there trying to have that work life balance. And
while that sounds like a good thing, something that we
all strive for in our own careers, it's kind of
a dirty word in medicine where the badge of honors
working those seventy two hour shifts and being at the
hospital or your practice constantly. And some people are saying that,
you know, the men are being influenced by these women
(11:10):
saying we don't want to work seventy two hours in
a where we want to have lives. And as a
result of this young generation of doctors working less, or
working part time, or stopping to have children and then
coming back, people are saying that this is going to
be the cause of a major physicians shortfall in just
like ten years, right because with the aging boomer population,
health the need, the healthcare need is exploding, and so
(11:33):
some people are worried that, hey, if these doctors don't
want to work constantly, what are we gonna do? But
you know, on the other on the other side of it,
people are saying, if these doctors slowed down, they might
be able to practice longer. There's gonna be fewer rates
of burnout. Um, you know, it's it's good to have
a happy doctor. When you talked about traumatic experiences, and
I think that was based on a not so happy doctor.
(11:56):
Maybe those lady doctors we had poor experiences with were
just kind of sour because they realized that they were
getting paid seventeen thousand dollars less than their male compatriots.
Are you telling you there's a gender pay gap, Priston Congress,
I'm telling you there's a gender pay gain, surprise, and
it is a wide one. And you guys probably heard
this news because this came out in February of this
(12:19):
year and it was widely reported because it is it
is a huge, huge pay gap, and it's one that
has only increased in recent years. And this was a
study published in Health Affairs journal Health Affairs, and just
just take a little take a little listen to this.
In new women doctors earned a hundred and fifty one
(12:42):
thousand dollars on average. Not too bad, I mean this
a little bit less than podcasters make. But you know,
I go to school for seven owner and as compared
to a hundred and seventy three thousand for men, so
you got in twelve point five percent salary difference. But
in two thousand eight, somehow that salary differences is widen
(13:03):
to nearly seventeen percent. That's that's crazy, and you know
they try and pack it and it may be some
reasons that you know, generally women make less. They may
not be as good to negotiating their salary, or they
may take on more family friendly benefits. To go back
to this idea that women doctors never want to go
to work, that does want to have kids, because because
(13:23):
that's how some articles can paint this, uh women doctor
schedule in that they you know, just want to take
a lot of flex time and don't work as much.
But even when they account for things like vacation and
different hours and differently specialties, it's still they're still a
huge pay gap. And if you have been in school
and training that long and to face such a huge
(13:45):
pay gap, yeah, I can understand why you might be
a little surly in your workplace. Yeah, even with heart surgeons, Like,
looking just at that specialty, female heart surgeons were earning
twenty seven thousand less on average, and female specializing in
pulmonary disease or earning average of forty four thousand less
than men. So something's going on there. And I don't
(14:06):
know whether it's bad math on the statisticians end or
some huge just gender inconsistencies in the medical field. Yeah,
I mean that's pretty crazy. And um, you know, at
this point, we'd love to hear from doctors med students
out there what you're hearing in your own workplace about
this pay gap, if you've noticed it, if you don't
(14:26):
notice it. Um, all the questions we've discussed, you know,
things like the feminization of medicine leading to short of
working hours, is that true? Yeah? And also women out there,
we'd like to know if you have to go to
the guy, no, do you care whether it's a man
or a woman. Just curious? Yeah, quick. Paul email us
at mom how stuff works dot com. Hit us up
on Facebook and Twitter as well. In the meantime, we
(14:49):
got a couple of emails to toss your way. All right,
I have an email here that it's not signed, but
I thought was really interesting the list. Right. My dad
mostly wears button down shirts, and when the local cleaner
started offering dollar per shirt deals on men's shirts, he
decided was worth bringing them all the cleaners. A couple
of years ago, I was home and somehow my Royal
(15:09):
blue button down collar and cut shirt got stuck in
the laundry and ended up in my dad's cleaners back.
My parents got it back. I told my dad to
tell me how much it costs him so I could
pay him back. Guess what, Since it was with the
bag of men's shirts, it went through as a men
shirt and was charged as a men's shirt for one dollar.
A short time later, I bought in the same shirt
to the same cleaners and ask them how much it
would cost four dollars. Four dollars talk about a gap?
(15:33):
All right? Well, I've got an email here from Daphne
and this is in response to our podcasts on Kegel exercises. Kegel, keegel,
we say kegel. Dathney writes, this might sound weird, but
kegels are the best thing that ever happened to me.
I like where this is gill and I have a
condition called interstitial systitis known as I SEE, and it's
(15:54):
basically an inflammation of the bladder lining. Not much is
really known about it, but my situation is actually fairly
mild and the only problem I had was intense urge
use the bathroom all the time. And y'all that's all
the time in all caps. I had two money procedures
done and have given up eating a lot of trigger
foods to calm my bladder. Eventually, the liny of my
(16:15):
bladder actually healed, but I was still experiencing this intense,
in tense urge to use the bathroom all the time.
So finally the physical therapist prescribes kegles and it worked.
Prior to the kegles, I couldn't travel far or spend
much time in a place without a bathroom. It made
me not even want to leave the house. Kegles are
awesome and have given me my life back. Put that
(16:37):
on a sure wow. Sometimes I do still feel the
urge to pee frequently, and I just start doing my
kegles again, and usually the feeling goes away within a
day or two. So I wonder if this would work
if you just this is just me riffing now that
Daphne's done. I just wonder if I, if you have
to use the bathroom, really bath if you can kegle
little keggle that urge away. Probably not forever, but yeah,
I think it cannot be controled. Golds urge to get home.
(16:58):
So if you break the seal, maybe kegle could. Kegles
could Maybe this is our opportunity to actually do an
academic study curse to go to the bars and then
we try some kegle. Okay, so oh man, that'd be
like the perfect podcast. Now, okay, anyway, let's let's let's
wrap this up. So if you have any questions, comments
thoughts to send our way. Mom Stuff at house stuff
(17:20):
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You at how stuff works dot com for moral thiss
(17:42):
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(18:03):
Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From house top works dot com. Hello and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Christmas is
our third in a series that kind of started accidentally. Yeah.
(00:24):
First we talked about nurses, nurses, We talked about midwives
and doler midwives and news, and now we're gonna talk
about female doctor female doctors. But we're not talking about
female doctors as in guinea colleges, although we will mention
guy to college. You know, I was actually going to
ask you a question to kick things off about a
guy in college. Okay, as a lady yourself, Kristen deb
would be me with lady part I do have a vagina?
(00:46):
Would you go see a male gynecologist? You know? If I, um, yeah,
yeah I would. I would. Would you think twice about it?
I mean, if you had your choice, who would you take?
I would take it. I would take a female doctor,
but I would be I'm more open to going to
a male kind o now than I was when I was,
say eighteen. Yeah, you know, because at first you don't
(01:06):
you know, maybe you're a little more us, a little
more squeamish about you know, stirrups and plus a male
in front of that. Yeah, I mean it's so awkward. Maybe. Yeah,
it can be traumatic to go to the kind of
colleges for the first time. Um, But then it gets easier.
Ladies out there, don't be I know plenty of I
know plenty of women who go to male kind of
(01:27):
collegists and they have no problem. Yeah. And so I
thought that would sort of be when we started researching
doctors who are women. I thought that'd be kind of
the main field where you'd see a lot of women
that you know, people who you know, specifically women When
I talk about people women who had lady parts might
want to see someone who also had a lady part,
women who had lady parts. Yeah, uh yeah, it's early. Um.
(01:48):
But then there's this really interesting study, uh that was
that found that yes, a lot of women would have
the preference for a female kind of cologists, the majority would.
But then even the women who had a lot of
people's said they had no preference. But then even the
woman who said they had a preference for a female
guydacologist went and saw a male GYDA cocologist and experienced
the same level of satisfaction with their appointment, right, because
(02:09):
they were most concerned. All the people in in this
study were most concerned with experience and capability before gender. Yeah,
so you know, that's sort of I think one of
the main things people can think of where they might
want a doctor in particular gender, and this study sort
of showed that. Yeah, it's on people's mind, but not
really because you and I and we will not go
(02:30):
into detail here, but I know for a fact that
you and I have both gone to female lady doctors
and had just bananas kind of experiences. So it's certainly
not it's not the gender of the doctor. Now you
can have a lady GUYDA cologist who will who will
freak you out. But like I said, no, no details, um,
(02:52):
but I do want to revisit one one little topic
before we move forward with this that we touched on
in the nursing podcasts. Because in the nursing podcast in
case you all don't recall, it was focused on while
nurse why nursing is typically a female profession as supposed
to a male profession, and it goes back to this
(03:12):
Victorian idea that was really promoted by Florence Nightingale of
the medical family as a family, the doctor is the father,
the wife is the nurse, and then the child is
the patient. So you have, you know, this male paternal
doctor figure. So now we've kind of worked our way
up up the wrongs. We're going to talk about the
(03:34):
differences between male and female doctors because there are now
just as many men as women coming out of medical school, right,
but what is the difference between them? Pretty much as
soon as these women started graduate from medical school and
entering practices, researchers were like, what's the delia, what's gonna
There's got to be a difference. So it's it's actually
(03:55):
been pretty widely studied, and uh, it comes down to
these things we always talk about as these stereotypically female
trait right, that might make women not better doctors, but
different doctors, because for instance, you know, female doctors will
typically prefer to wear hot pink scrubs um and carry
their purses in the operating room with them. They like
(04:18):
designer scalpels, whereas men will just go to costco. Yeah,
that extra attention to detail, that women can bring their
shopping skills really help them in the emergency. Yeah it does, Yeah,
Kristen jokes, of course they aren't. But those sort of
stereotypically things. How many times we said that women are
better communicators? Too many times? Then I would that I
(04:40):
would care to count. I was actually thinking about this
as I was reading all this research of just over
and over again. If you look at studies on gender differences,
women communicate, they're like mothers, even if they're not your mother.
Men might not take as much time to speak with you,
but they are thinking in their heads, whereas we they
were thinking with their vows and hands. That doesn't make sense,
(05:03):
It kind of does that. I mean, that's what it
comes down to, you, for better for worse, that this
idea that these womanly traits can affect your experience at
the doctor who are bedside manner. So, yeah, there are
tons of studies about women communicating better, women taking a
little bit more time with each patient. Um. But you
(05:23):
know what's kind of funny is once you start to
look at some specific diagnoses that doctors can make, that's
when it starts to break down a little bit. Yeah,
let's start with something a little more intuitive with plastic surgery.
Around of plastic surgery patients in the US for cosmetic
plastic surgery, especially women, and what are we gonna get done?
(05:46):
Probably our boobs, So they might need to get bigger,
they might need to get smaller. You might have had
breast cancer and need to reconstruct them. Right, So those
are some options, And women will say that female plastic
surgeons might not be so quick to make a judgment
of like, okay, all right, you want to go bigger,
(06:08):
let's go big. I need to go small. Let's be
a wad as small, whereas women might just want something
a little more just in the middle. And female plastic
surgeons who have possessed breasts of their own and have
grown up with the experience of of having breasts might
take a little more time and figure out what that
patient really needs and tailor at a little a little
(06:29):
better than a male doctor, not saying that the the
outcome will be any worse like that. There men and
women aren't aren't as good technically, But yeah, they're saying
that the woman will actually listen to what you want.
But again, I think this will come down to individual doctors.
They're really great. Male plastic surgeons on betting, just as
there might be really crappy female plastic surgeons. It's it
(06:51):
can be very subjective once you get right down to it.
But let's let's turn in to another medical conundrum, Christian
heart disease. Heart disease. Coronary heart disease is typically referred
to as an illness of older men. Yes, and that
would be wrong. But that would be wrong. Why would
(07:12):
it be wrong because when they get it too, Yeah,
it's like weird, doctor's right, the doctor is in So yeah,
typically um considered an illness older men, but it is
a little bit harder to diagnose in women, which is
why it's typically associated with older men, just because it's
(07:35):
easier to spot in them. But when it comes to
spotting coronary heart disease, the gender of the doctor seems
to make a little bit of a difference, at least
according to this one study that was reported on in
the New York Times in two thousand and seven. But
not in the way you think. You think that maybe
(07:55):
a female doctor, knowing that this is a little harder spot,
would be more attuned to those little hints that could
indicate the heart disease. But no, they found out that
actually the female doctors when diagnosing the female patients male patients,
everyone could spot the signs, but female doctors were likely
to overlook the biggest risk factor for heart disease, which
(08:17):
was age. All the male doctors when they looked at
the female patient considered the age, whereas the female doctors
sort of forgot about age and looked at all these
other clues and thus we're um not as good at
diagnosing the heart disease. So it's an example. I mean,
you can find one that proves that women can be better,
the plastic surgery example. You can find another study that
says the men have got it going on the heart
(08:38):
disease things. So again, it's not like anyone's better. It's
not like anyone's better. And we should make a point
that it's not like all the study methodologies looking at
these gender differences between doctors are locked tight either. Because
there were some complaints about this study on coronary heart
(08:58):
disease that at the doctors involved, there were a hundred
and twelve male and female primary care doctors who were
just watching videotapes of professional actors portraying patients with symptoms
of heart disease. So the dot perfect right, And so
some doctors were saying, who were commenting on the study,
(09:20):
were saying, hey, you know what this would change if
they were actually, if that was a real patient in
a real waiting room. I think that the results would
be different. You need to replicate these kind of findings.
And you know, even the studies that are based on
a patient's preference, because a lot of people say it's
not so much the doctor's gender, but the patient's preference
for a certain gender. That's all based on you know,
a survey and what the patients saying. And even if
(09:43):
the study is anonymous and randomized, maybe some patients don't
want to say, you know, straight out that they prefer
one gender or the other. There's really no way to
know how all these studies are going UM in terms
of these methodologies. But one thing we can say is
that whether they're different, whether they're better, whether or they
are worse, women certainly are changing the faith of modern medicine.
(10:04):
They are, and they're making it a much prettier one.
Their features and Joel lines and those no, I'm talking
about their working hours, Kristen, Yes, this is true, UM,
Women physicians typically don't want to have that constant on
call schedule. They will want to pick a little more
(10:28):
family friendly schedules. Um For instance, there was a gynecologist,
Natalie Feldman, who was saying that women physicians have helped
make it more acceptable for both genders to try to
strike a balance between work and family life. And she said, quote,
the new generation is much less driven to work long hours.
They're gonna want to go into emergency medicine or anesthesia
(10:50):
where you have to work, but they're not on call
right there trying to have that work life balance. And
while that sounds like a good thing, something that we
all strive for in our own careers, it's kind of
a dirty word in medicine where the badge of honors
working those seventy two hour shifts and being at the
hospital or your practice constantly. And some people are saying that,
you know, the men are being influenced by these women
(11:10):
saying we don't want to work seventy two hours in
a where we want to have lives. And as a
result of this young generation of doctors working less, or
working part time, or stopping to have children and then
coming back, people are saying that this is going to
be the cause of a major physicians shortfall in just
like ten years, right because with the aging boomer population,
health the need, the healthcare need is exploding, and so
(11:33):
some people are worried that, hey, if these doctors don't
want to work constantly, what are we gonna do? But
you know, on the other on the other side of it,
people are saying, if these doctors slowed down, they might
be able to practice longer. There's gonna be fewer rates
of burnout. Um, you know, it's it's good to have
a happy doctor. When you talked about traumatic experiences, and
I think that was based on a not so happy doctor.
(11:56):
Maybe those lady doctors we had poor experiences with were
just kind of sour because they realized that they were
getting paid seventeen thousand dollars less than their male compatriots.
Are you telling you there's a gender pay gap, Priston Congress,
I'm telling you there's a gender pay gain, surprise, and
it is a wide one. And you guys probably heard
this news because this came out in February of this
(12:19):
year and it was widely reported because it is it
is a huge, huge pay gap, and it's one that
has only increased in recent years. And this was a
study published in Health Affairs journal Health Affairs, and just
just take a little take a little listen to this.
In new women doctors earned a hundred and fifty one
(12:42):
thousand dollars on average. Not too bad, I mean this
a little bit less than podcasters make. But you know,
I go to school for seven owner and as compared
to a hundred and seventy three thousand for men, so
you got in twelve point five percent salary difference. But
in two thousand eight, somehow that salary differences is widen
(13:03):
to nearly seventeen percent. That's that's crazy, and you know
they try and pack it and it may be some
reasons that you know, generally women make less. They may
not be as good to negotiating their salary, or they
may take on more family friendly benefits. To go back
to this idea that women doctors never want to go
to work, that does want to have kids, because because
(13:23):
that's how some articles can paint this, uh women doctor
schedule in that they you know, just want to take
a lot of flex time and don't work as much.
But even when they account for things like vacation and
different hours and differently specialties, it's still they're still a
huge pay gap. And if you have been in school
and training that long and to face such a huge
(13:45):
pay gap, yeah, I can understand why you might be
a little surly in your workplace. Yeah, even with heart surgeons, Like,
looking just at that specialty, female heart surgeons were earning
twenty seven thousand less on average, and female specializing in
pulmonary disease or earning average of forty four thousand less
than men. So something's going on there. And I don't
(14:06):
know whether it's bad math on the statisticians end or
some huge just gender inconsistencies in the medical field. Yeah,
I mean that's pretty crazy. And um, you know, at
this point, we'd love to hear from doctors med students
out there what you're hearing in your own workplace about
this pay gap, if you've noticed it, if you don't
(14:26):
notice it. Um, all the questions we've discussed, you know,
things like the feminization of medicine leading to short of
working hours, is that true? Yeah? And also women out there,
we'd like to know if you have to go to
the guy, no, do you care whether it's a man
or a woman. Just curious? Yeah, quick. Paul email us
at mom how stuff works dot com. Hit us up
on Facebook and Twitter as well. In the meantime, we
(14:49):
got a couple of emails to toss your way. All right,
I have an email here that it's not signed, but
I thought was really interesting the list. Right. My dad
mostly wears button down shirts, and when the local cleaner
started offering dollar per shirt deals on men's shirts, he
decided was worth bringing them all the cleaners. A couple
of years ago, I was home and somehow my Royal
(15:09):
blue button down collar and cut shirt got stuck in
the laundry and ended up in my dad's cleaners back.
My parents got it back. I told my dad to
tell me how much it costs him so I could
pay him back. Guess what, Since it was with the
bag of men's shirts, it went through as a men
shirt and was charged as a men's shirt for one dollar.
A short time later, I bought in the same shirt
to the same cleaners and ask them how much it
would cost four dollars. Four dollars talk about a gap?
(15:33):
All right? Well, I've got an email here from Daphne
and this is in response to our podcasts on Kegel exercises. Kegel, keegel,
we say kegel. Dathney writes, this might sound weird, but
kegels are the best thing that ever happened to me.
I like where this is gill and I have a
condition called interstitial systitis known as I SEE, and it's
(15:54):
basically an inflammation of the bladder lining. Not much is
really known about it, but my situation is actually fairly
mild and the only problem I had was intense urge
use the bathroom all the time. And y'all that's all
the time in all caps. I had two money procedures
done and have given up eating a lot of trigger
foods to calm my bladder. Eventually, the liny of my
(16:15):
bladder actually healed, but I was still experiencing this intense,
in tense urge to use the bathroom all the time.
So finally the physical therapist prescribes kegles and it worked.
Prior to the kegles, I couldn't travel far or spend
much time in a place without a bathroom. It made
me not even want to leave the house. Kegles are
awesome and have given me my life back. Put that
(16:37):
on a sure wow. Sometimes I do still feel the
urge to pee frequently, and I just start doing my
kegles again, and usually the feeling goes away within a
day or two. So I wonder if this would work
if you just this is just me riffing now that
Daphne's done. I just wonder if I, if you have
to use the bathroom, really bath if you can kegle
little keggle that urge away. Probably not forever, but yeah,
I think it cannot be controled. Golds urge to get home.
(16:58):
So if you break the seal, maybe kegle could. Kegles
could Maybe this is our opportunity to actually do an
academic study curse to go to the bars and then
we try some kegle. Okay, so oh man, that'd be
like the perfect podcast. Now, okay, anyway, let's let's let's
wrap this up. So if you have any questions, comments
thoughts to send our way. Mom Stuff at house stuff
(17:20):
works dot com is the email address. You can also
hit us up on Facebook, like us, send us a
comment all that good stuff. You can follow us over
on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And then lastly, you
can always read our blog It's stuff Mom Never told
You at how stuff works dot com for moral thiss
(17:42):
and thousands of other topics. If is it how stuff
works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, clock
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(18:03):
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