Medicine and Multimedia: The Woman in the Surgeon’s Body
Authors: Sarah Creighton
Journal: BMJ (1998)

Joan Cassell

“Anybody but the girl! Give me a trained monkey—I’d rather have anybody but the girl!” So raged a male senior surgeon in theatres when scheduled to have a female trainee assisting him. This is just one episode illustrating this riveting study on women surgeons in the United States. “What’s an anthropologist doing studying surgeons?” the author was asked while conducting a study on male surgeons; she replied (perhaps jokingly), “Well, there were no other primitives left.” She now turns her attention to women surgeons, and clearly the term primitives was not a misrepresentation of many of their male colleagues.

The author studied 33 women surgeons of differing ages practising in eastern and mid-western United States. There was a wide representation of career stages and surgical subspecialties. She spent five days spread over a two week period shadowing each surgeon and also conducted structured, tape recorded interviews. She observed relationships with colleagues, patients, nurses, and trainees as well as aspects of family life. The aim of her study was to examine differences between male and female surgeons and the internal and external forces affecting these differences.

Each chapter examines a key area and is vividly illustrated with extracts from the taped interviews as well as descriptions and analysis provided by the author. The frantic, fast paced, almost hysterical way of life in an American department of surgery provides an enthralling background. The author sensibly lets the interviewees speak for themselves when she wishes to make a point. As the author herself says, whether or not you agree with her interpretations, the women surgeons are engrossing.

Some difficulties experienced will be familiar to any woman working full time in a busy job either in or out of medicine. While working lengthy hours, the woman also has the major responsibility for the running of the home, social life, and ensuring reliable child care. As one of the surgeons interviewed remarks, “We need a wife.” Other factors described could also apply to many careers—for example, the lack of senior women as role models or mentors and isolation in male dominated departments. 

Other episodes illustrated were truly appalling and surely must be unique to general surgery. It is hard to believe that these incidents could happen in the 1990s. Sexism was both covert and overt. Examples include a weekly departmental meeting where the only female member of the team was forced to listen to explicit descriptions of the type of sex the male residents had had the night before. More sinister still was the lack of recognition for good work and subsequent lack of promotion or sidelining by senior male colleagues into unpopular subspecialties. Grosser injustices such as lower pay for women surgeons doing the same job as their male counterparts and little or no maternity leave could, I hope, not happen in Britain.

The women themselves, however, were inspirational. They combined surgical excellence with compassion in a unique way. They overcame prejudice to provide outstanding patient care and excellent teaching for juniors. After reading this, it was humbling to wonder how one’s own practice would appear if held up to such close scrutiny. This must be a therapeutic aspect of the book for readers.

This study could only have been conducted by a female anthropologist. It is hard to imagine a man gaining the confidence of the surgeons interviewed to obtain images of such clarity. I hope that this excellent book is widely read—but in particular read and taken heed of by male surgeons.