Gender Bias in the Perception of Physicians

Women are often penalized when they do not project traditional, socially defined femininity (e.g., gentleness, nurture, sensitivity, lack of competitiveness, lack of drive for achievement) and instead project traditional masculinity (e.g., ambitiousness, assertiveness, self-sufficiency, authority; Heilman & Chen, 2005; Prentice & Carranza, 2002). A common arena for gender bias and penalization is in the professional workplace where women in high status positions must usually exhibit various masculine-stereotyped characteristics. Judgment disparity is evident in business and corporate marketplaces (Flynn & Anderson, 2003) as well as in the health professions where patients scrutinized female physicians more harshly than male physicians (Cousin, Mast, & Juanin-Stalder, 2013). Research has yet to examine whether people project gender bias towards a physician based only on a biography.