I had to blow the whistle on sexism in the NHS
Dr Zoe Norris tells Rosa Silverman why she felt compelled to reveal the toxic culture at the top of the medical profession, this week
‘It’s an old boys’ club, and it’s not OK.” Dr Zoe Norris does not mince her words when describing the culture of the British Medical Association (BMA). But then, at this point, why would she? Earlier this week, she and a fellow female GP raised their heads above the parapet to speak out about the institutional sexism that proliferates in the medical profession.
Although Dr Norris felt “terrified” about a backlash, the explosive article she co-authored with Dr Katie Bramall-stainer for Gponline has provoked something quite different.
“I’ve probably had 100 expressions of support, and Katie has probably had similar: people saying ‘I’ve had this experience’ and ‘this happened to me and I didn’t report it’,” she says, of the accounts from men as well as women of verbal and physical bullying and sexually inappropriate behaviour, both related to the BMA and in the medical profession at large.
Both she and Dr Bramall-stainer have held prominent roles on the BMA’S GP committee (GPC). “We won’t in the future,” they wrote, “largely because of the experiences we have had at the hands of some colleagues in those roles.”
They listed a catalogue of unacceptable behaviour that had gone unchallenged for too long: “The experienced delegate who overheard ‘two senior people on GPC’ braying loudly their guesstimated bra size of a key committee member… The LMC [local medical committee] chief executive who was sexually explicitly propositioned after presenting a
keynote speech... The squeezing of the thighs. The patting of the bottoms. The incessant nudge-nudge, wink-wink more suitably placed within a 1970s Monty Python sketch.”
Put simply, the BMA appears to be having its own Metoo moment. But for Dr Norris and others, anger has been building for some time. “I was aware of lots of comments about the appearance of female colleagues, about bottoms being patted and grabbed, about breast size,” she says. “I was aware of the naked picture sent to a colleague, and the sexual propositioning.”
Although female GPS outnumber male GPS in the NHS, women are outnumbered two to one on the committee representing them. So this conduct is a feature not so much of general practice itself, Dr Norris stresses, but of BMA get-togethers – the regular conferences and meetings that those involved in the doctors’ trade union and professional association are expected to attend – “particularly at social events where alcohol is involved”, she says. “It seems to be an open secret in the BMA and hasn’t been challenged.”
Or if it is, it is dealt with quietly, as with the complaint she made about the bullying conduct of a senior male colleague. For the past three years, the 38-year-old mother-of-two from East Yorkshire has had a BMA role as chair of the sessional subcommittee. “So every GP who is not a partner in the UK is represented by me at national level,” she explains. Within weeks of taking up her BMA role, however, she started to feel uneasy. “A lot of it was low level stuff, so I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘it’s one of those things’.” But it has escalated over the last two years, “to the point where I wanted to resign”.
Part of it was what she calls the “general behaviour” of some of those involved in medical politics: “Sexual comments about what I’m wearing, how I look. I’ve sat and listened to male colleagues discuss their sexual exploits. I’ve said, ‘I’m not comfortable with this, can we change topic?’ and they’ve carried on.”
But it was the bullying – being undermined and threatened verbally – which prompted her to register an official complaint. “Nothing happened,” she says, “I felt so pressured to deal with it in a very low-key, informal way when I wanted it dealt with formally. In the end it was too much of a strain on my mental health, so I withdrew the complaint because going through the process was worse.”
A spokesperson told The
Telegraph, “The BMA cannot respond in detail to this allegation as to do so would breach the very confidentiality our reporting processes are there to protect.”
Things came to a head at an LMC conference last month, when Dr Norris was part of a group asked to consider gender balance. The floodgates duly opened.
“Stories started coming out from colleagues about sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying,” she says. Yet the ensuing report was “stamped on and made to be about facts and figures: how many men are there and how many women there are”.
To make matters worse, she was told by a male colleague that her speech to conference was “rather naughty” and asked what her husband would think. When Dr Bramall-stainer was likewise told she “wasn’t a little girl” and “couldn’t carry on being naughty,” they could no longer keep quiet.
Dr Stephanie De Giorgio, a GP in East Kent, has now added her voice, after her own experiences with the BMA. “The thing that finally finished me off was when I challenged Jeremy Hunt at the RCGP [Royal College of General Practitioners] conference and it made it on to the news,” she says.
“Someone very senior from the BMA came up, patted me on the knee and said ‘Oh, you naughty girl,’ and laughed and walked off, in front of the media. Doing that in the public domain was deeply insulting.”
Such behaviour has cost general practice a whole generation of leaders, the women argue. But if sexism, bullying and misogyny has flourished in the world of medical politics, Dr De Giorgio, 43, a mother of two who has worked as a doctor for 19 years, says it’s a problem in other areas of medicine, too.
“It’s about power,” she says. “The number of competent, capable, amazing women who tell you about being pinned against the wall by a colleague, or groped in a meeting, or told if you don’t have sex with them your career might be damaged… it’s astonishing.”
On Wednesday, the BMA promised to launch an urgent, independent investigation. “Sexist, disrespectful, discriminatory and abusive behaviour will not be tolerated in this association and must be stamped out,” said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, its chairman.
“It’s the old mates’ club I want to be eradicated,” says Dr De Giorgio.
Radical reform is needed, agrees Dr Norris, who has no regrets about bringing everything out into the open.
“It’s been overwhelming, surprising and extremely stressful,” she says.
“But this needed doing. It’s not fair of me to leave it for someone else to deal with.”
‘Women tell you about being pinned against the wall and groped in meetings’