WA’s only female heart and lung surgeon has called for hospitals and other workplaces to level the gender imbalance. Fiona Stanley Hospital’s Dr Nikki Stamp is one of 11 female cardiothoracic surgeons in Australia, but says patients sometimes mistake her for a nurse. Dr Stamp said most instances of overt sexism in workplaces had been replaced by a more subtle and “unconscious” gender bias. She said hiring and other employment processes were often geared towards favouring men over women. “By taking some of the subjectiveness out of how we choose candidates for jobs or training, I would hope we employ more people on merit and start levelling out the gender imbalance,” she said. Dr Stamp said her most “severe” case of gender bias was a few years ago while working at a Sydney hospital where a male patient threatened to discharge himself from care when he realised his entire medical team was female. “The stereotypes can be so strong, particularly by older patients, but I don’t find that horrendously offensive, it doesn’t make me angry,” she said. “It makes me want to show that our prejudices and biases might not seem like a harmful thing but when these stereotypes perpetuate, they inevitably result in system biases which will disadvantage someone. “That’s why these stereotypes should be challenged, not to make that person (with biases) feel bad but to make our systems and our society much stronger.”
