12-April-2024

This TED-Talk I watched today is by Sarah Hillman. She elaborated on how she previously wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of being a feminist. One of the reasons for this was that sometimes the word could have a negative connotation. She feared that identifying as a feminist would harm her image, seeing as she was being personally and professionally supported by men. Her first step into medical feminism was her realization that the only way she ever had a right to follow a medical path in the first place was because of brave medical feminists of the 19th century. The first 7 women who joined medical practices faced many hardships; they were charged more to participate, forced to find their own lecturers, and had to fight to have the same rights as men in medicine. They were told they couldn’t, but they did. This began the influence of women in medicine all over the world. Women continued to face problems despite all the changes. Unconscious bias is a concept where we use our instinct (experience, background, culture, surroundings, etc.) over logical, objective analysis to make judgments. It’s human nature to use unconscious bias to operate in today’s world, but it isn’t a logical behavior. Subjective analysis is not the way to go; every factor from every perspective has to be considered for the judgment to be fair. When we use subjective analysis, we often end up being wrong. It’s hard for professions like medicine, who are accustomed to using their instincts, to realize the wrongdoing in their biases. The root that this bias emerged from was back when all medical practitioners were men, thus making the male body the default. When images of the woman’s body appeared, many were confused and unfamiliar with the female parts since they had never seen them before. Much of the research has been done on male body parts of various animals. It was only later realized that female bodies just may have different reactions than men to certain stimuli, which can drive the research being done in many fields. The ongoing misjudgement has led to many errors in medical care for men and women, all because of society’s image of toxic masculinity and undermining women. It’s only up to us to change whether we view everyone as equals or whether the inequality will still continue to grow.