I hate being called "nurse"!!!

[SadieKate]

This thread is making me laugh sympathetically. In our company is a Ph.D in something like statistics. We are a medical software company, not academia. Yet, his voice mail is "Hello, you've reached Dr. John Doe's voice mail." He even introduces himself as Dr. So and So when everyone else just gives their name and follows up with the name of their position, such as "I'm Jane Smith, I'm the medical director." It sounds so very weird to my ears, like he's constantly worried that he appears better than everyone else.

[Lise]

I got a name badge at a conference once that read Dr. Lise H--, PhD. Wow, I thought. I went to either medical school or got a doctorate, all in a blackout! We got it corrected. I was presenting at the conference, so I got to announce, "I am not a doctor, I do not have a PhD..."

[Duck on Wheels]

When I was out on maternity leave, 23 years ago, two colleagues were out doing field work on my project. One was a senior researcher, the other a recent hire. The recent hire was sent out to learn the field from the senior researcher. When they appeared together, everybody ignored the senior researcher and directed their questions and answers to the junior. They also constantly asked whether my senior colleague was a nurse and whether my junior colleague was a doctor. Now guess what their respective genders were. Not hard to guess, huh? Both were social scientists -- excellent ones, though neither has a doctorate. One just got hired into a tenured associate professorship at a Dept. of Community Medicine -- ahead of an M.D. and Dr. Med. with an impressive publication list and a long list of projects and grad students at that very department. Want to guess again which of my former colleagues got the job and what gender the medical and academic doctor was who got passed by? Easy guess again, huh?

Think maybe you don't share those prejudices, that you somehow out of all the many millions within our culture have managed to unlearn them? Try taking a test or two at
http://www.understandingprejudice.org/iat/
It's fun, it's fast, it's anonymous and private, and you might learn something about yourself. I did.

[Nanci]

Oooh, this made me think of an old joke, let's see if I can get it right:

A man and his son were in a serious car accident. The father was killed, but the son was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. When the son was wheeled into the OR, the surgeon proclaimed "I cannot operate on this boy- he is my son!" How could that be?

[Blueberry]

Sadly, this isn't just true in the medical field.

I'm an attorney. Most recently, I was attending a deposition in Asheville, NC and one of my male co-workers was taking the deposition. The court reporter assumed I was a paralegal or secretary. She was somewhat taken aback when I informed her that I was, in fact, an attorney for one of the parties.

Not at all uncommon - but sad.

[Triskeliongirl]

I am a scientist, and I remember being at a female colleague's home in Cambridge England on the day she published an important paper in the prestigous journal nature. She took a phone call from a press reporter, who immediately asked if her husband were at home so she turned the phone over to him, only to have him explain to the reporter that indeed it was his wife that he should be interviewing. But in actual fact, I don't feel that I have experienced very much gender bias in my career. Maybe I am lucky, but its never really been an issue for me. Another funny story though, I was once accused of gender bias in a grant review. The grant applicant, not knowing her grant was reviewed by a female, complained of gender bias when it was not funded, so despite the fact that we are both women, I had to be investigated. Gladly, it was determined that I was not biased against my own gender!