More likely will write the thing that depends of that.
ETA: I think that as right as it is about sexism, it undersells the underlying problems in medicine that are afflicting all patients, and which exacerbate the sexism. I think there's something going on that's analogous to how economic downturns and protracted unemployment predict rises in domestic violence. I think stressed systems take out their stress disproportionately along lines of oppression because of course they do. I think medicine is a massively stressed system.
I am suspicious that there's not enough clinical time and effort to go around, and when that is the case, who gets adequate care becomes, horribly, a matter of treater discretion. Once resource allocation becomes a matter of the discretion of individuals, it becomes massively unjust, utterly subject to those individuals' prejudices and unconcious biases.
My theory is that in a system with enough health care to go around – enough treater-hours, enough funding, enough access to the tools and materials of health care – then women (and other minorities) would only be subject to the discriminatory biases and prejudices that expressly indicate different treatment, such as doctors actually believing women just complain more therefore need less pain relief than men. But once you have health care scarcity, you also have treaters making snap decisions about who is most "in need" of their time and attention and resources, and automatically decrement the priority of treating women. So, say, a woman will sit longer in a ER before even getting to be seen by an MD who will decide she's complaining for no reason and doesn't need pain relief.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2017-06-30 06:03 pm (UTC)ETA: I think that as right as it is about sexism, it undersells the underlying problems in medicine that are afflicting all patients, and which exacerbate the sexism. I think there's something going on that's analogous to how economic downturns and protracted unemployment predict rises in domestic violence. I think stressed systems take out their stress disproportionately along lines of oppression because of course they do. I think medicine is a massively stressed system.
I am suspicious that there's not enough clinical time and effort to go around, and when that is the case, who gets adequate care becomes, horribly, a matter of treater discretion. Once resource allocation becomes a matter of the discretion of individuals, it becomes massively unjust, utterly subject to those individuals' prejudices and unconcious biases.
My theory is that in a system with enough health care to go around – enough treater-hours, enough funding, enough access to the tools and materials of health care – then women (and other minorities) would only be subject to the discriminatory biases and prejudices that expressly indicate different treatment, such as doctors actually believing women just complain more therefore need less pain relief than men. But once you have health care scarcity, you also have treaters making snap decisions about who is most "in need" of their time and attention and resources, and automatically decrement the priority of treating women. So, say, a woman will sit longer in a ER before even getting to be seen by an MD who will decide she's complaining for no reason and doesn't need pain relief.