That riddle still trips people up. Perhaps not as many, which is good, but still.
Is there actually something wrong in that story, or is the question supposed to be “How is that possible?” I’m just curious whether this is a riddle that is phrased that way because it has a real answer (other than “nothing”) rather than fishing for the assumptive one (that only men are ER doctors.)
It’s supposed to something more open-ended , like " How is that possible?" " and the assumption came out when people came up with convoluted answers, like the surgeon was the biological father and the man who died was an adoptive or step-father.
It may be less foreboding, and be more friendly, much like personal assistants (Alexa, Siri, Hey Google)are usually either female by default or female only.
even now very few surgeons are female.
As far as Siri, Alexa, etc. that might be related to the traditional practice of having women doing dispatching for cops, fire, etc. I read a while back they picked women for those jobs because they thought their voices were easy to understand.
Quite a few surgeons are female. And most of the OB/GYNs.
Here’s a list of the percentage of men and women who are residents in various medical specialties in the U.S., as of 2013:
Since this is a survey among residents (that is, among doctors who have finished medical school and who are learning their specialty), it predicts what the percentage of doctors in those specialties will be in two or three decades:
Obstetrics/gynecology: 85% women
Pediatrics: 75% women
Family medicine: 58% women
Psychiatry: 57% women
Internal medicine: 54% men
Surgery: 59% men
Emergency medicine: 62% men
Anesthesiology: 63% men
Radiology: 73% men
4th year med student here - I’ll have my M.D. in a few months and I’ve been working in hospitals for years. Among my colleagues/coworkers, people automatically refer to doctors whose genders they don’t know as “he”. If anyone - doctor, nurse, tech, etc., - is made aware of a new “Dr. Soandso”, and we don’t know them, I’ve noticed that the pronoun assigned is “he/him” until proven otherwise. When I try to tell stories about my work to my non-medical friends, they often get confused as soon as I start speaking in pronouns; when I say “she” they assume I’ve started talking about the patient or the nurse instead of the doctor. As a woman, I’m mistaken for a nurse on a daily basis, in spite of the fact that I work with as many female residents as male. I’ve had a few female attendings, but they tend to be mainly male.
In OB-GYN, the distinction is really striking - I never had a female attending, but all but one of the residents in my OB-GYN rotation were female. It was about 10 females led by 2 males.
I like that commercials refer to doctors as “she”, because it serves to rebalance the discrepancy I’ve observed - doctors my age and a bit older tend to be almost 50/50 male/female, whereas people, whether in the healthcare profession or not, tend to assume a doctor is is male until proven otherwise.
snfaulkner snfaee
" you have 84 posts and 66 of them are new threads."
Steven Estes Reply:
Yes. This category is not “Great Debates”, but “General Questions”
My posts are for getting information. Usually no conversation or debate is required.
Answer this question quickly…
A boy and his father are in a car crash, the father dies, when the boy gets to the hospital the surgeon says “I can’t operate on him, we’re related”
Who is the surgeon? Think quickly and see your bias in action…
Mom? Adult sister? Grandma? Any random relative of either or any gender?
I suspect you were fishing for “Mom”. Not a hard thing to guess, given the original context of the thread.