It’s Still A Thing - Sexual Harassment and Discrimination In The Health Field

A long time ago – in 2017 - I asked in an article why so many doctors and other health care personnel were the object of sexual harassment and other employment discrimination. Why are so many in the “helping professions” doing things which are anathema to their oath or professional ethics?

I posted about a then new U.S. study  which “found that ‘More than 80 percent of nearly 900 physical therapists surveyed [80 percent of whom are women] said they have encountered sexual remarks, touches, indecent exposure and sexual assault. … U.S. health care professionals have 16 times greater risk for non-fatal violence at work than other fields.…’”

Harassment was most common between a female therapist and male patient, noted the study, and treating mostly male patients increased the odds of harassment by almost 400 percent.

In Above The Law I observed:

“Seems that a common thread – besides the obvious misogyny, and abuse of vulnerable women – is the lack of sexual harassment and diversity training and sexual harassment policies. This is precisely what my partner Amy Epstein Gluck and I have been focusing on for years – exhorting employers to maintain appropriate sexual harassment policies and train, train, train management and employees. And then train some more.”  Read the entire ATL article here.

“I recalled a university study from Australia in 2013 which found that more than half of female general practice physicians were subjected to requests for an inappropriate examination; inappropriate exposure of body parts; gender-based remarks; inappropriate gifts; sexual remarks; and touching or grabbing.”

And I wrote then - in 2017 - that “[n]ot much has changed since 2013.” 

It is now 11 years later …

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

It seems that even with a greater emphasis on training, and mandated training in many jurisdictions, sexual harassment of medical personnel continues unabated.  And discrimination of all kinds continues. Perhaps it is still the fact that there continues to be disparate power relations in these particular workplaces and women remain vulnerable, despite their increasing numbers.

So, let’s look at the latest reports from various medical workplaces.

The Ob-Gyn Workplace

In a new study, researchers “found that OB-GYN respondents frequently reported a prevalence of sexual harassment (range, 27.6 percent of physicians to 70.9 percent of female gynecologic oncologists), workplace discrimination (67.2 percent of female versus 38.5 percent of male gynecologic oncologists), and bullying (52.8 percent of female gynecologic oncologists).

“OB-GYN trainees often experienced sexual harassment (69.1 percent), including gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion. About one-quarter of medical students surveyed (25.1 percent) indicated mistreatment during their OB-GYN rotation. Physicians, other trainees, and operating room staff were perpetrators of harassment (30.1, 13.1, and 7.7 percent, respectively). No significant decrease in the frequency of sexual harassment was seen with any intervention (emphasis added.)”

Unbelievable: “About one-quarter of medical students surveyed (25.1 percent) indicated mistreatment during their OB-GYN rotation.”

Significantly, the study’s author’s concluded that: "Interventions to decrease harassment had not been adequately studied, but institutionwide, multipronged approaches with support from varying levels of stakeholders appeared to have the highest efficacy for reductions in mistreatment in medical training.”

"Nevertheless,” they noted, most interventions were not associated with reduced sexual harassment."

Now that’s quite deflating since we exhort managers and employees to undergo training.

How About the Pharmaceutical Workplace?

 A new study from the UK is just as distressing when it comes to disability discrimination in the pharmaceutical workplace.

The Pharmacists’ Defence Association survey “revealed that 40 per cent of participants expressed feeling excluded from the workforce, underemployed, or unemployed because of their disability. It was found that nearly 70 per cent of participants either did not receive reasonable adjustments or only received partial reasonable adjustments to accommodate their disability.  More than half of respondents (53 per cent) reported experiencing discrimination in the workplace. Among those who faced discrimination, 60 per cent said it came from their manager, while 40 per cent reported experiencing discrimination from colleagues.”

Health Care Workers

A recent UK survey found that “one in ten (10%) healthcare workers reported experiences of sexual harassment, yet half do not report it to their employer. The main reason for this was a fear of being considered ‘over-sensitive’ (60%), followed by a lack of trust in the process (53%) and a feeling that their employer would not act on their complaint (48%).”

How About, Say, Antarctica? Must Be Ok There, Right?

No good news even there. Indeed, in that remote place, you might expect the worst.

The US National Science Foundation published a report in 2022 that found that “72% of current and former female employees believed sexual harassment and assault in Antarctica is a problem, that 59% of women had experienced it themselves, and 95% knew someone directly affected.”

This was not news then.  Four years earlier, five women claimed that there was sexual harassment, sexual coercion and bullying in Antarctica.

And a janitor at McMurdo station found a used condom in her gloves as well as paper towels "scrawled with slurs and threats and stuffed in the pockets of my patched puffy coat."

Anything Else (He Hesitates To Ask)?

Indeed. 

The EEOC just sued a medical care clinic for terminating an employee on her first day of work when she requested a reasonable accommodation for her visual impairments.  When she informed the employer of her impairment, the employer “questioned why she did not raise these issues in her interview, and immediately terminated her.”

As the EEOC correctly noted, “[s]uch alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits employers from soliciting information pertaining to an applicant’s disability prior to a job offer. The ADA also prohibits an employer from refusing to employ a worker who might need a reasonable accommodation in an attempt to avoid accommodating the employee’s disability.”

Is There Any … Good News?

Yes! A little …

The Defense Department reported “an overall decline in reported sexual assaults among active-duty service members.”  Moreover, “the military academies suggests that leaders are finally getting a handle on what has been a persistent problem.”

Good news, right?

Alas, all silver linings have a cloud … The military also noted that:

“One in every four women in the military and close to 6% of the men said in the survey that they had experienced sexual harassment during the year. Because the U.S. military is roughly 80% male, that means that actually more men — 60,330 — than women — 55,464 — said they were harassed.”

Oh well. 

Takeaway

I wrote this some years ago: Seems that a common thread cited above – besides the obvious misogyny, and abuse of vulnerable women – is the lack of sexual harassment and diversity training and sexual harassment policies (remember?).  We’ve also, as I said above, been exhorting employers to train, train, train management and employees. 

And then train some more.

But in some of these studies, that was evidently not enough. But I still believe that it’s an important task and must be continued.