Sex and Gender Differences in Aging
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Six of seX & whY: Sex and Gender Differences in Aging Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guest: Dr Haag is a researcher in molecular epidemiology who studies human biological aging at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Background - Dr Haag has a PhD in functional genomics and Post Doc in genetic and molecular epidemiology. She studies telomeres and molecular association with telomere length, she also has experience in molecular biology and computer science. Definitions and discussion points from podcast - a new field of biomedical science that looks at how the...
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Global Health and Pandemic Responsiveness Through a Sex and Gender Lens Part 2
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Five of seX & whY, Part 2: Global Health and Pandemic Responsiveness Through a Sex and Gender Lens Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guests: McKinzie Gales and Emelie Yonally Phillips – Global Health Fellow at the CDC and co-lead for Phase I of the multi-agency SAGER IOA project aimed at facilitating better collection, analysis, and use of sex-disaggregated data and gendered data for outbreak response. – Global Health consultant (Epicentre/MSF) and core member of the Integrated Outbreak Analytics initiative ...
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Global Health and Pandemic Responsiveness Through a Sex and Gender Lens Part 1
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Five of seX & whY: Global Health and Pandemic Responsiveness Through a Sex and Gender Lens Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guests: – Fellow at the CDC and co-lead for Phase I of the multi-agency SAGER IOA project aimed at facilities' better collection, analysis, and use of sex-disaggregated data and gendered data for outbreak response. – Global Health consultant and core member of the Integrated Outbreak Analytics initiative Definitions IOA - Integrated Outbreak Analytics SAGER - Sex and Gender Equity in Research The Integrated Outbreak...
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Sex and Gender Differences in Conflict - Part 2
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Four of seX & whY: Sex and Gender Differences in Conflict, Part 2 Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guest: Joyce Benenson, lecturer of evolutionary biology at Harvard and author of the book In this podcast we continue our discussion about women interacting with each other at the workplace and how women often manage hierarchy differently than men. We got into a spirited discussion about a question posted on a female physician’s list serve querying whether women physicians want to be addressed as “Doctor” by other staff members. (My own preference was “yes” in...
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Sex and Gender Differences in Conflict - Part 1
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Four of seX & whY: Sex and Gender Differences in Conflict, Part 1 Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guest: Joyce Benenson, lecturer of evolutionary biology at Harvard and author of the book Warriors and Worriers Here is a link to Dr Benenson’s book . This book dives deep into the evolutionary roots of human behavior and Dr Benenson makes a very clear and well referenced case that human males and females have evolved from slightly different playbooks. The root of this difference is sexual selection in that adaptions and behaviors that optimize the chance...
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Issues Surrounding Men’s Health - Part 2
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Three of seX & whY: Issues Surrounding Men’s Health, Part 2 Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guests: Peter Baker – Twitter: Dominick Shattuck has a PhD in psychology and does Global Health Work at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Main topics discussed: Challenges and barriers associated with optimizing men’s mental health and the role of men in reproductive health-related issues. Men’s mental health is important not just for men but for the health of communities....
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Issues Surrounding Men’s Health - Part 1
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Three of seX & whY: Issues Surrounding Men’s Health, Part 1 Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guests: Peter Baker – Twitter: Dominick Shattuck has a PhD in psychology and does Global Health Work at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Here is a of Peter Baker’s publications including Here is a of Dominick Shattuck’s publications Take home points Somewhat ironically even though most major health related organizations are dominated by men in...
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Sex, Drugs, and Rats
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-Two of seX & whY: Sex, Drugs, and Rats Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guest: Dr Irv Zucker, Faculty at UC Berkley since 1966. Interests include behavioral endocrinology, chronobiology, and sex differences in pharmacology General discussion Many times, the worlds of basic science and human clinical trials do not overlap to the degree that they should. Greater coordination between the two silos, especially as it comes to the examination of sex differences, would likely produce more robust, higher quality science that would benefit a greater number of...
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Sex and Gender Differences in Opioid Use Disorder
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty-One of seX & whY: Opioid Use Disorder Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guests: Dr Alyson McGregor, author of Sex Matters: How Male-Centric Medicine Endangers Women's Health and What We Can Do About It Dr Lauren Walter Here is link to American Psychiatric Association DSM 5 diagnosis for opioid use disorder from the . Essentially the disorder is defined by continued craving and use of opioids despite significant social and professional consequences caused by its use. This podcast is on sex and gender differences in opioid use disorder. Although sex (s) and gender (g) are...
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Interview With Dr Shirin Heidari Part 2: Gendro - Advancing Sex and Gender Equity in Science Research
seX & whY
Show Notes for Episode Twenty of seX & whY: Interview With Dr Shirin Heidari Part 2: Gendro - Advancing Sex and Gender Equity in Science Research Host: Jeannette Wolfe Guest: Shirin Heidari PhD, virologist and experimental oncologist, founding President of Gendro. Part 2 of Interview with Dr Shirin Heidari This podcast focuses on Dr Heidari’s work on systematically integrating the variables of sex and gender into different access points along the research pipeline. She helped start an organization called which is dedicated to this mission. The three major gatekeeping posts...
info_outlineShow Notes for Podcast Nine of seX & whY
Host: Jeannette Wolfe
Guests: Dr. Dan O’Connor, Dr. Anna Mueller
Topic: Gender Differences in Resident Evaluation
Welcome back to Sex and Why. In this episode I am joined by Dr. Dan O’Connor, a dermatology resident at Harvard and co-founder of Monte Carlo software that makes apps for medical educators, and Dr. Anna Mueller, who is a medical sociologist and Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. They are here to discuss their research showing gender disparities in evaluations of emergency medicine residents.
First study
Comparison of Male vs Female Resident Milestone Evaluations by Faculty During Emergency Medicine Residency Training. JAMA Internal Medicine 2017
This study examined data from a real time milestone evaluation app used on emergency medicine residents. It involved 356 residents (66% male 34% female) and 285 faculty (68% male and 32% female) at 8 different sites and included over 33,000 evaluations. They showed that although male and female residents had similar evaluations during their first year of training, by their 3rd year male residents were evaluated statistically higher across all 23 core competencies and this occurred regardless of the gender of the evaluator.
Second study
Gender Differences in Attending Physicians’ Feedback to Residents: A Qualitative Analysis. Journal of Graduate Medical Education
This follow up study was done to better understand why there are gender differences in the evaluations and focused on a qualitative analysis of comments written about third year residents at one of the above program sites. It involved analyzing and creating summaries of individual residents (who had at least 15 written evaluations) and included an analysis of over 1000 comments on more than 45 residents.
General findings:
- Evaluations often contained personality related comments even when the task that was being evaluated was objective or technical
- Men, compared to women, appeared to have more comments associated with praise versus criticism around these personality related comments
- Men appeared to have more concordant feedback by evaluators concerning how to improve in areas in which they struggled
- Women received more discordant feedback about ways to do things better in areas in which they struggled especially surrounding issues about autonomy and leadership
- Evaluators perceived that women were less likely than men to receive feedback appropriately.
- Evaluators were more likely to include encouraging comments concerning “a sense of belonging” to male residents
Steps moving forward
- Take a deep breath- this is difficult stuff to discuss and it can easily feel like an attack upon our character.
- Come to terms that this data is real and legit. This topic is incredibly important and we need to consciously move past our own visceral discomfort of it to find better ways to teach and evaluate the next generation of doctors.
- Do a private audit of your own evaluations
- Be more objective in suggestions for improvement
- Reinforce a sense of belief in ability and of belonging
Stay tuned for next month in which we will tackle feedback.
Dayal, A., O’Connor, D. M., Qadri, U., & Arora, V. M. (2017). Comparison of Male vs Female Resident Milestone Evaluations by Faculty During Emergency Medicine Residency Training. JAMA Internal Medicine, 177(5), 651. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.9616
Mueller, A. S., Jenkins, T. M., Osborne, M., Dayal, A., O’Connor, D. M., & Arora, V. M. (2017). Gender Differences in Attending Physicians’ Feedback to Residents: A Qualitative Analysis. Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 9(5), 577–585. http://www.jgme.org/doi/10.4300/JGME-D-17-00126.1
Additional studies we talked about
MRI study about political views- evaluated how individuals with definitive political views may process contradictory information differently than individuals with more flexible mindsets. Kaplan, J. T., Gimbel, S. I., & Harris, S. (2016). Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence. Scientific Reports, 6, 39589. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep39589
Thoracic surgery study that suggests that male surgical fellows may actually receive more advanced operative experience than their female matched peers
Meyerson, S. L., Sternbach, J. M., Zwischenberger, J. B., & Bender, E. M. (2017). The Effect of Gender on Resident Autonomy in the Operating room. Journal of Surgical Education, 74(6), e111–e118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2017.06.014
JAMA study perceiving gender differences in implicit bias in academic medicine
Jagsi R, Griffith KA, Jones R, Perumalswami CR, Ubel P, Stewart A. Sexual harassment and discrimination experiences of academic medical faculty. JAMA. 2016;315(19):2120-2121. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5526590/