A couple of days ago, during Surgery lecture, our teacher was going to ask a girl a question. He paused then said, "you girls will just get married after this, let's ask someone who is actually going to use this knowledge," then proceeded to ask a boy the question. Looking back I don't even know why I was surprised, but it shocked me. I admire this particular teacher. I have been in the OT with him, I have seen him operate. He was nice enough to explain stuff to us too. So I was definitely not expecting this. A friend then pointed out how many teachers must think that while teaching us. That it's useless, that this knowledge won't amount to anything. And it pisses me off that even after all this time, even when there are so many female physicians, people still think women in Pakistan do MBBS only to get a good rishta. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but it's a very small percentage of girls whose sole purpose of becoming a doctor is to get a good rishta. Most of my friends are here because of their passion to learn and be a good doctor. Most of them plan on practicing after graduation. We have every right to learn because we do plan on using this knowledge to help people. Why else would we be wasting our efforts and our parents' money here? For a rishta that isn't even guranteed to be good? On the other side of the spectrum I know many guys who are doing medicine only to please their parents and plan on changing their careers after graduation. Shouldn't they be treated the same way then? Sexism is prevalent everywhere but particularly in this field. When male teachers give girls marks based on how pretty they look, when male teachers are more eager to teach male students than us, when we are made to feel uncomfortable during vivas because instead of judging our knowledge the teachers ask us personal questions they have no business asking. I pray some day this discrimination and harassment ends. #medicine #womensday #sexism #genderdiscrimination #womeninmedicine #personal https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu1JyDUH17D/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=s0xl5nx2b0cm
