Time's up for sexual harassment in medicine

Abstract

A career in medicine can be a gruelling endeavour. Long hours, heavy workloads, and high responsibilities make the job physically and emotionally demanding. Yet a report released this month by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) reveals often under-recognised additional challenges for women: a staggering 58% of female faculty and staff across academia have experienced sexual harassment, and female medical students experience sexual harassment at much higher rates than their peers in science and engineering. Sexual harassment is a form of gender-based violence that violates women's rights, harms their health, damages their careers, and undermines the credibility and success of organisations. As Adrienne O'Neil and colleagues outline in today's Lancet, sexual harassment can result in anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In the workplace, sexual harassment decreases productivity, damages team relationships, and can cause women to leave their position, institution, or profession. NASEM found that sexual harassment is most likely to occur in environments where such behaviour is perceived as tolerated. For clinicians, it is most common in surgery and emergency medicine, which tend to be male dominated and value hierarchical working environments. In a culture that accepts, and even glorifies, the conquest of challenges at work, abusive and sexually degrading behaviour, particularly towards residents, can become normalised—part of what women are expected to endure to succeed. Recommendations for preventing sexual harassment include zero tolerance, improved transparency and accountability, and increased representation of women at all levels. The Lancet is committed to publishing scholarship that addresses gender inequality across science, medicine, and global health, and today launches an online collection on gender in advance of a planned #LancetWomen theme issue in February, 2019. Tolerance of sexual harassment must not continue to be the price that women pay for a career in medicine. The #MeToo movement: an opportunity in public health?The worldwide #MeToo movement has brought renewed attention to the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace. Such sexual harassment is a form of gender-based violence at work that is an organisational, criminal, and ethical issue. Despite this renewed focus, sexual harassment is rarely considered a public health issue. The #MeToo movement presents an opportunity for the public health community to consider sexual harassment a health issue with implications for disease prevention and health promotion. Full-Text PDF