Oh what a surprise. Not.
I love a movie, ladies and gents. I do.
I am particularly fond of a medical movie, particularly those involving plagues, contagions, emergency departments and disasters.
Can’t get me enough blood splatter, is the bottom line.
So a research letter from JAMA Internal Medicine caught my eye, with the catchy title Portrayal of Women as Physicians in Movies, 1990-2020.
The authors – seven of them, SEVEN – justified watching 1226 movies by saying that: “Women have been under-represented in professional roles in movies, causing concern about perpetuation of gender stereotypes.”
Quite right, quite right. I concur. Pass the popcorn.
Our intrepid researchers split their viewing into decades: 379 US movies with a physician character from 1990-99, 412 from 2000-09, and 435 from 2010-20. That’s a helluva weekend, right there.
What they found was shocking, I tell you, shocking. In the 90s only 28.5% of those physician characters were women; in the noughties, it squeaked up to 29.1%, and it dropped again in the 2010s, down to 27.8%.
When there was only one doctor in the movie, that physician was a woman just 16.9% of the time.
All of that is annoying, right? People still hear the word “doctor” and picture a man.
You know what’s even more annoying?
The researchers didn’t list anywhere – not even in the supplemental material – the movies they watched or the female doctors they found.
What. The. Actual.
How am I supposed to verify their results? Where’s the reproducibility, people?? Call in the research cops.
So, just because I am a fundamentally decent human being, here are the best female physicians in the movies, all-time. You’re welcome.
- Dr Beverly Crusher – yes, I know Star Trek: Next Generation was a television series but there were also four Next Gen movies of variable quality – Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis. And Dr Crusher was underused and under-rated in all of them, but damn it, she was there
- Dr Claire Lewicki, Days of Thunder. Nicole Kidman at her … well not her worst, okay?
- Dr Erin Mears, Contagion. Kate Winslet works hard, coughs a lot, and dies. It’s a cracker.
- Dr Robby Keogh, Outbreak. Rene Russo stands up to Dustin Hoffman, nearly dies and deliberately infects herself in the process.
- Dr Rachel Mannus, Flatliners (the 1990 version not the remake). Julia Roberts flirting with death. And Kiefer Sutherland, back when he wasn’t a right-wing nutjob.
Honourable mention goes to the 13th Doctor. Who? Yes exactly. I know it’s television, shut up. It’s Jodie Whittaker.
Send story tips to penny@medicalrepublic.com.au about how you can woman and doctor at the same time.
