Woman Doctor

Woman/Doctor, Where Does The Twain Meet?



It was the last semester of pre-med and I was having second thoughts about entering medical school. Many of my classmates were changing majors, signing up for BS Chemistry, or Zoology. Medicine was intimidating. It was hard to qualify for a spot in the University of the Philippines College of Medicine and the study was too long and hard. Out of over 500 applicants only a little over 100 were accepted and among these women figure in less than 15%. I was having a crisis of confidence, but I didn't know it was about that then. I told mama I wasn't going to medical school, instead, I will continue towards a BS Chemistry degree. Imagine! Well, mama was unhesitating, she put her foot down and there's to be no argument. I will go to Medical School and I will be a doctor. And so it came to pass, FRV, MD, UP Class '67.

When I think of how I experienced folk medicine in Pasacao when I was growing up, I shudder! I could have died, I could have aspirated and have a collapsed lung or I could have had an embolus and died of a stroke. I had asthma in childhood and when I have an attack I feel like I'm drowning. I feel like I'm going to die. The folk remedy is to drink blood directly from the gushing neck arteries of a baby crow. Four grown-ups would pin me down, force my mouth open to gulp the fresh blood. I'd resist, thrash about, and fight with everything I have. If I had a fever the treatment is to heat suction cups and place it on your body to suck the fever out. I also remember leeches; they suck out whatever was poisoning your body. Well, I survived these and amazingly without apparent post-traumatic stress injury.

The interview in medical school ironically, was the traumatic one. I didn't know how to label it then but it was the first encounter with the many varied presentations of sexual discrimination. It becomes operational when you enter the world populated by men and begin to take away from their share. Up until then I was in my proper place. In undergraduate school its good for a woman to be educated so she can marry upwards socially and economically. She will not take away from a man's share because once she's married she's expected to stay home and take care of the family. But Dr. Katigbak, bless his soul, he's now dead, the Secretary of the UP College of Medicine who interviewed me for admission to the college, put it very clearly to me, "Why would you take up a slot in this class when it can be filled by a man and not be wasted, after all, you will get married and stay home and never practice medicine!" And perhaps he thought it was a compliment to me, so he added," Why don't you work in a bank, or become a stewardess, you'll meet eligible, ambitious young men and get married." In those days, women who work in these places were mostly mestizas, supposedly alluring and beautiful women, educated in Catholic private schools, sought out in marriage by eligible ambitious young men. I didn't know what to think then but I had a very uncomfortable feeling, a mixture of shame, anger, insult, and confusion. I must have mumbled some inane stock reply like, " But no sir, I'm dedicated to a career in medicine because I want to serve humanity!" When I think about this today and can see it for what it is, I become livid! I should have slapped the jerk across the face, kicked his balls and tied him to a tree and cut his penis off and feed it to the buzzards! And there were many more encounters to come. The obvious ones are easy to handle, but those that come disguised as compliments or gestures of caring are really difficult to confront.

I take pains to present myself professionally but men and invariably women don't hesitate at all to make a comment on my appearance during hospital rounds, meetings or during patient contacts. My male colleagues do not get greeted with " My, you look nice, where do you shop for your clothes" or " What do you eat, you never gain weight" I understand these are intended as compliments, but very subtly it undermines my professional status and trivializes my influence. I notice patient and staff take my time with an attitude of entitlement, unlike my male colleagues whose time is more guarded from frivolous intrusion. It appears one can chat up a woman doctor and not be thought of at all as being interrupted from her work, whereas a male doctor is perceived as doing serious and important work whose time should not be wasted. I have patients who can't address me as Dr. V, all the while knowing I'm their doctor, instead they address me as Miss or Mrs. Occasionally I play a game with this and remind them to call me with my professional title, they apologize and correct themselves but before you can say boo again, they lapse into the lay title. Male colleagues are addressed with the professional title Doctor automatically. Older patients or veteran hospital staff have called me "Honey", and treated me in a childlike or patronizing manner. Others had an outright belittling attitude challenging my decision or professional opinion. I had to rely more on formal accreditations such as Specialty Board Certificates or Citations and Diplomas to establish my professional authority. I also find that I need to give more educational information to patients for them to trust my recommendations and medical opinions not so much because they seek the information to understand for themselves but for them to hear that I know what I'm talking about. In quasi-social situations where spouses are included, it is assumed I'm the spouse and John, the doctor. I have to exercise high level diplomacy to be accepted by the female spouses, to avoid any antagonism, at the same time avoiding being encircled in their midst, otherwise I miss valuable networking opportunities and professional identification. It's a catch-22 dilemma. Professional networking is most effective in these quasi-social situation, people are more forthcoming with information, you get the early rumors, you get to know people better. The men invite other men without any qualms, to their homes or to have dinner or a drink in a public place and discuss business. I find that I have to befriend my male colleague's spouse so everyone will feel comfortable in this situation. It helps tremendously also that I am married.

The response I get when I do something exceptionally well has bewildered me. In this professional accomplishment people have behaved as if I have done something so extraordinary and they are elated and very proud of me. I was president of the Hospital Medical Staff at a time when we were facing many challenges; corporate control, budget cutbacks, staff lay-off, declining insurance revenues, medical staff discontent, and professional peer review problems. What I did was keep the focus on the issues, maintain dialogue, keep everybody involved, adopt a realistic and down-to -earth perspective, and hang in there with everyone. I did a good job and I avoided ego trips for myself and for others. But the effusiveness to acknowledge this gave me mixed feelings, because men are not fussed with in this manner. It is assumed they can do this as an ordinary matter. Frankly, I thought it was patronizing, but what am I supposed to do? Of course, I have to play my role right and smile and thank everyone, and be nice like a woman. It was the very same flavor I tasted when I returned with 11 male colleagues from an Outward-bound Wilderness Bonding Exercise in the North Carolina Grandfather Mountain. It was 4-day program. I carried a backpack as heavy as the men's and I weighed half of any of them. They elected me to lead the hike across mountain ridges with only a compass for orienting to our direction and they also elected me to lead the crew in our raft when we descended the white water rapids on our last day. I accepted these because I wanted to avoid being relegated to cooking and setting-up camp duties. When I look back there were 12 of us and I didn't need to have all these responsibilities, but to a man I believe they unconsciously conspired to set me up. If I fail, nobody loses face because I'm a woman, but to have me lead them avoids the possibility of failure for any of the men. Interestingly this group of men is particularly mindful of not appearing sexist by studiously avoiding offering me any kind of assistance. There also was no concession at all to physical privacy, I slept in the same group tent with them and performed toilet and grooming functions in their midst. I was thankful I did not have my menstrual period that week. I've always been a good sport in the company of guys. I've survived medical school by behaving like one of the guys, and growing up in Bicol I was a tomboy. The individual challenges posed by Outward-bound, like walking a log twenty feet high or free falling from forty feet or scaling a forty-foot wall, were familiar adventures from my childhood. When we returned, the buzz about the weekend filled the hospital. It seemed everyone knew about it from administration down to maintenance and later on among the spouses of my male colleagues. Everyone, male and female was just elated and tickled and so proud of me, they were so amazed that I did it! I was confused, bothered, and bewildered, but I was programmed to be nice, so I smiled and thanked everyone. Just try and protest and call this sexist, and see what kind of response you'll get. I didn't dare, I have too much to lose. It was early in my career, and for a woman this condescension was a necessary evil to get your goal. The glass ceiling may be raised in this generation but it's not broken yet. In many ways we're still living in Mary Ann Evan's time when she had to hide behind a male pseudonym to publish her " Adam Bede" as George Elliot in 1859.



To be a woman doctor and have a career that's competitive in professional prestige and financial success and networking power, and to have a life, I'm convinced, is not the same for my male colleagues. It is easier for them because first of all they have a wife. We all know wives are worth twice their weight in gold for the way they facilitate and enable their husbands to succeed in their careers by allowing them to focus on their work and taking stress away from them by dealing with family and life problems. Johnny has been very supportive but he is a husband. I have to be the wife and simultaneously, the doctor too. To make it as a woman doctor one must have a solid sense of oneself, have a toughness within as well as having a tough hide, competitiveness, an Attitude, and a solid grounding in nurturing relationships with other women.


I was going to be an architect and being a Colegiala I was planning like all good catholic girls to go to the University of Santo Tomas for college. But mama had a different vision for me. She saw me as a Doctor who will graduate from the premier institution in the Philippines, the University of the Philippines. I was amazed, I never had enough confidence in myself to see me going to medical school in the University of the Philippines. But mama was so certain about me and I'm glad that she was so decisive and held fast when I wavered later, indeed seriously considering shifting to BS Chemistry, because My Life would have been very different otherwise. Still sometimes I wonder, where would it have led me, the road not taken?