Trainees are being abused by senior male surgeons, a major analysis given to the BBC reveals.

Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape have been referred to as surgery’s open secret.

There is an untold story of women being fondled inside their scrubs, of male surgeons wiping their brow on their breasts and men rubbing erections against female staff. Some have been offered career opportunities for sex.

The analysis - by the University of Exeter, the University of Surrey and the Working Party on Sexual Misconduct in Surgery - has been shared exclusively with BBC News.

Nearly two-thirds of women surgeons that responded to the researchers said they had been the target of sexual harassment and a third had been sexually assaulted by colleagues in the past five years.

Women say they fear reporting incidents will damage their careers and they lack confidence the NHS will take action.

  • Syrc@lemmy.world
    46·
    1 year ago

    Full stats by the way:

    Among women, 63.3% reported being the target of sexual harassment versus 23.7% of men

    29.9% of women had been sexually assaulted versus 6.9% of men

    10.9% of women experiencing forced physical contact for career opportunities (a form of sexual assault) versus 0.7% of men

    Being raped by a colleague was reported by 0.8% of women versus 0.1% of men

    Not sure why it keeps being framed as “versus” like it’s some sort of competition and it doesn’t mean both sexes get sexually harassed and that’s not fucking okay for either.

    • iegod@lemm.ee
      13·
      1 year ago

      That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of scientific/mathematical language used in statistical studies.

      • Syrc@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        Considering the title of the study is “Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape by colleagues in the surgical workforce, and how women and men are living different realities: observational study using NHS population-derived weights”, I feel like the stress on the ratio is intentional.

        • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
          3·
          1 year ago

          I wonder if you also write this, but with genders reversed, under every report and article about “lonely men” or “men dying by suicide”.

          • Syrc@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 year ago

            Link me one article about men’s problems with depression that dismisses women’s problems like this one does and I can tell you my opinion.

              • Syrc@lemmy.world
                1·
                1 year ago

                That’s not even an article. That’s a support page, in a support site, under the “men” section. Obviously they don’t mention women, like in support pages for women they don’t mention men.

                And I’m not that great at using Kbin, but it seems to me the most upvoted article on that community is this one. From that article:

                Furthermore, the absence of male teachers in early education can perpetuate gender stereotypes and suggest that caregiving is a women’s job.

                In order to achieve gender equality, the researchers said, it is necessary to ensure that women have equal opportunities in traditionally male-dominated fields such as STEM while also creating opportunities for men to work in historically feminine/HEED positions.

                That seems like pretty supportive for an article that should be on the same level of one that states “male and female surgeons live different realities” in the face of 1/4th of them having reported sexual harassment.

                  • Syrc@lemmy.world
                    1·
                    1 year ago

                    The title is indeed a problem since it would’ve cost them nothing to just remove “female” and have a gender-neutral one, but again, the issue is how dismissive it is towards men who suffered the same harassment they’re denouncing.

                    Those three pages have pretty much nothing close to that, and again they’re not really supposed to be unbiased articles: the first one is on a site for some sort of online course (I think?), the second is on a hospital’s site (and under the “Men’s Health” section), and while the third seems to be an actual news site, the article is very clearly just meant to promote that guy’s movie.

                    Closest to what annoyed me would be this paragraph from the first one:

                    According to a recent YouGov poll in the UK, almost one in five men (18 per cent) owned up to not having a single close friend. Furthermore, one in three (32 per cent) stated that they didn’t have a best friend. For women, these figures were lower at 12 and 24 per cent respectively, suggesting that, on average, men in the UK are leading more solitary lives compared to women.

                    Which also gives off a similar vibe of “yeah one woman out of four doesn’t have a best friend, but who cares about that”, and that’s definitely not ok, but it’s different to see that in a sketchy website compared to literally bbc.com. They’re both examples of unprofessional journalism, but I don’t think the ones at “happiness.com” are even meant to be journalists.