Gender justice requires gender amnesty

[摘要] I find myself embarrassed this issue to be an ostensibly British-born, White, public school-educated, straight, cis-male. In a sense, that declaration of interest has to proceed a Life & Times introduction in a themed issue on gender.When reading the spread of articles in this issue it struck me that we need diversity to be better clinicians, colleagues, and citizens. This insight is in part inspired by Wahlert and Fiester’s description of ‘queer bioethics’, which requires us to take a two-fold approach: 1) We must pay greater attention to the topics, identities, and issues that are blatantly queer, for the service of queer persons; and 2) We must examine the most pedestrian, and the most germane, of universal health issues (those we wouldn’t even instinctively think of as ‘queer’), and imagine how they might be complicated or rendered troubling by the injection of queer personhood.A GENDERED PROFESSION AND ITS GENDERED PUBLIC The diversity (including gender) very literally embodied by the primary care workforce in the UK is undoubtedly a strength. We can share each other’s gaze and expand each other’s horizons. In this issue Laura Douglas teaches us through her own experience of Asherman’s Syndrome, an overlooked condition characterised by uterine adhesions and infertility.This gender-balance no doubt has contributed to an enlightened variety of work patterns — the number of GPs is clearly greater than the number of full-time equivalent places at work. Charlie Massey, Chief Executive of the GMC, recently announced ‘There is no ready-made batch of GPs waiting to be plucked off the shelf to ease the pressures on the workforce’, but Nada Khan begs to differ, illustrating a variety of shelves. It would be a colossally sexist and untrue assumption that these shelves primarily make medical work more palatable for women, but full-time general practice is certainly not the family-friendly profession it once was, for any of us.The gender-balance also entails weaknesses. Adnan Saad reflects that it is gender rather than female-ness that may be at issue: ‘practice[s] may need to appreciate that, by trying to protect one group of staff, they may be exposing another group to vulnerabilities.’Saul Miller explores gendered aspects of GP training in terms of exposure to clinical cases, patient preference reflected in doctor avoidance, and expanding understanding around the health aspects of sexuality and gender.Ahmed Rashid’s Yonder selection includes research from the US that found that Black women in a study had the highest death rate from breast cancer and were less likely to have breast cancer screenings. The authors highlight that Black women often already face additional health and life disparity, and may view such disparities as part of their daily lives.

[学科分类] 卫生学