When It's Assumed That You're the Cleaner, Not a Cardiologist: Gender Inequities Prevail

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi. This is Dr Michelle O'Donoghue, reporting for Medscape. As a woman in cardiology, I have to admit that until recently I did not give a great deal of thought to the sacrifices made by women in past decades that have helped open doors and pave the way for my career. I'd also been taking for granted that women and men might be treated the same way within this field, but I'm recognizing that inequities still exist. Certainly this extends beyond just sex alone; we obviously need to place more focus on differences in terms of race as well as ethnicity. But thinking particularly about the sex inequities that persist, I think we would all agree that there are indisputable facts, such as the continued underrepresentation of women within the field of cardiology and several of the interventional subspecialties and the continued inequity in terms of the pay gap.

Some of our male colleagues may not be as cognizant of the more subtle differences that women in cardiology face on a daily basis. Almost every time I walk into a patient's room with a group of house staff and am accompanied by a younger male colleague, the typical assumption is that the male physician is the attending physician.