LONDON Male and female doctors across the UK went to work wearing pink on Wednesday morning to show a united front following a newspaper column that suggested the "feminisation of medicine" was partly to blame for the NHS' current woes. #pinkwednesday is the second of two hashtags used in recent days to hit back against the article — the first, #likealadydoc, is still going strong — following the publication of a story in The Sunday Times in which journalist Dominic Lawson inferred that women are more likely than men to put family life ahead of their career, which he suggested was causing problems for the health service. "Quite simply," Lawson writes, "the average male medical graduate will work full-time, while the average female won’t." #pinkwednesday was kicked off by Roshana Mehdian — an orthopaedic surgeon and the woman behind the #likealadydoc campaign. "[It's] a response to Dominic Lawson's article in The Sunday Times which conflated the issue of female doctors and the junior doctor strike," "He suggested female doctors are a problem in modern medicine, a comment which belongs in the 1800s, not in this century. "Women in medicine are surgeons, physicians, leaders, college presidents whilst also often being wives, daughters, mothers, sisters. The fact that women achieve and contribute so greatly to medicine is nothing but a celebration for the profession. She said the #Pinkwendnesday campaign aimed to celebrate the contributions by doctors from all sexes, backgrounds and ethnicities. The selfies have been flooding in throughout Wednesday morning. Mehdian told us the response has been excellent. "We've had as many men posting themselves wearing pink as women; and doctors from across the world as far a field as Australia joining in," she said. "Even some Royal colleges have joined in which makes a statement about how important the profession feels women's contributions are to medicine." "The response makes me feel very proud to be part of the profession," Mehdian continued. "As a female orthopaedic surgeon in an extremely male dominated specialty, It's very important to me that we demonstrate women can break through all perceived barriers and that their male colleagues are extremely supportive for them to do so!" Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. Source
