Happy International Women’s Day 2022! This year’s theme is #BreaktheBias, and it feels quite sad that in 2022 there remains a large amount of conscious and unconscious gender bias in medicine and society in general. Just a few days ago a patient’s parent kept asking me when the Doctor was coming to see her child, despite me explaining several times that I am the doctor. My bright yellow “ST3+ Doctor” lanyard clearly wasn’t doing the trick of identifying who I am.

The 1st of February 2022 marked 105 years since a group of medical women met at a tavern on the Thames to form the Medical Women’s Federation. Thanks to every President and group of Officers at the organisation, the Federation has remained the largest body of women doctors in the UK for 105 years. To mark this anniversary of the organisation, we have launched The Medical Women Podcast, which I have the honour and joy of getting to host and produce. The aim of the podcast is to support and empower medical women in their careers, despite the bias.

For our International Women’s Day episode, I thought it would be very fitting to celebrate our 80 Presidents of the organisation; an organisation would not have survived 105 years unless it’s leadership ensured it remained relevant, continued to campaign, and ensured there were adequate funds. The first President, Dr Jane Walker, was of course President at a time when the country was in the midst of the First World War and when women did not have the right to vote. She remarked that “The work of medical women is becoming daily more needed and more appreciated, and in view of the call on the whole profession it is felt that every means should be taken to organise such work, in the interests of medical women, of medical men, and of the nation as a whole.” The Federation has from the outset had gender equity at it’s heart, and as Dr Walker says, it is in the interest of our male colleagues and our patients to have an equitable medical system. We all benefit from an equal society.

Another formidable Past President was the late Miss Caroline Doig. I heard about her when she very kindly donated a legacy to the Medical Women’s Federation. She was determined to become a paediatric surgeon and succeeded despite many barriers to become the first woman elected to the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. She wrote in her autobiography that she started writing ‘C Doig’ on her application forms for jobs in the hope that she would be mistaken for a ‘Charles’ and considered for the job; when she wrote ‘Caroline Doig’ many of her application forms were returned unopened.

I think it is important for us to look back and learn from our predecessors. It highlights how far we have come in 105 years and shows how much they have paved the way for those of us in the profession now. I don’t think of myself as a ‘woman doctor’ but as a doctor; until I face some bias that reminds me that the world still remains an unequal place for a woman. It also reminds me that I have a duty to do my bit to make things better for those who come after me; for 105 years the MWF has been campaigning against the gender pay gap. I hope in another 100 years, the gender pay gap is a historical absurdity and the doctors of 2122 can’t believe there was such a thing! If you are interested in learning more about the history of the Medical Women’s Federation, or women in medicine, I would highly recommend our first podcast episode which covers this topic, and our digitised archive at The Wellcome Trust.

I had the joy of visiting the archive for the first time at the beginning of March and was really interested to find that in 1948, the Medical Women’s Federation were making a ‘Book of memory’ about the founders of the MWF and notable and pioneering medical women, to ensure that their hard work was remembered and acknowledged. I hope that the podcast episode will also be way of remembering these remarkable women and ensuring that we continue to celebrate our predecessors who have paved the way for those of us who are medical women today.

The way to tackle bias is to acknowledge that it exists and then work together to break it. This is where male allies are really important. In 2019, thanks to then President Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones and then President Elect Professor Neena Modi, MWF welcomed it’s first male honorary members. Male allies such as Professor Sir Simon Wessley, Mr Simon Fleming, and Dr JS Bamrah have been exemplary in their allyship and this remains a very important part of breaking the bias.

This is a blog for BMJ leader, and the 80 Presidents of the Medical Women’s Federation have been important and inspiring leaders. For the IWD podcast episode, I asked the Presidents who are still with us to share important leadership lessons from their career. Common themes were: apply for roles even when your imposter syndrome is telling you that you can’t do it, leaders are not perfect, present possible solutions when you notice a problem, you have to be willing to make decisions, you have to be willing to take advice and ask for help, you will find your own leadership style. I think it is important to remember that each of us is a leader, even if we do not have a formal leadership role.

When I interviewed Professor Neena Modi for her podcast episode, she posed the question to me whether I thought it would be a success if the Medical Women’s Federation no longer existed in 100 years’ time. I have been pondering the answer to this question. If we no longer need a Medical Women’s Federation in 100 years’ time, it would mean that there was gender equity in medicine, everyday sexism wouldn’t exist and there would be no gender pay gap, that women’s health was well researched, that pregnant women were not excluded from clinical trials, that shared parental leave was a commonplace thing, that women doctors were not assumed to be other members of the multidisciplinary team. This will only happen if each of us does our bit in tackling inequality, and we work together to create a more equal world and #Breakthebias.

Dr Nuthana Prathivadi Bhayankaram

Nuthana is a paediatric registrar in the North West. She has undergone clinical and academic training and is currently trying to work out which subspecialty she would like to pursue. She is Vice President of the Medical Women’s Federation, possibly the first junior doctor to hold this Office in the organisation’s 105 year history (she has looked through the archives to try and fact check this; the ages of all the Vice Presidents are not documented but the majority are Fellows of Royal Colleges, suggesting they are Consultants or GPs rather than junior doctors). In February 2022, she launched The Medical Women Podcast which she hosts and produces with the aim of supporting and empowering as many medical women in their careers as possible.

Declaration of interests

I have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: I am vice president of the Medical Women’s Federation and I host and produce our podcast.