Gabrielle McMullin, a Sydney-based vascular surgeon, was speaking to ABC radio on Friday to promote a book she has co-authored on gender equality, when she brought up the case of a female neurosurgical trainee in Melbourne, who she referred to as Caroline.
Caroline, recounted McMullin, was being mentored by a male senior surgeon, who repeatedly asked her to go to his rooms at night. When she finally did this he sexually assaulted her, and she rebuffed his advances. In response, he started giving Caroline bad reports.
Caroline complained and finally won her case, but, McMullin said, had since been unable to get a job at a public hospital in Australia. McMullin continued: “Her career was ruined by this one guy asking for sex on this night. And realistically, she would have been much better to have given him a blow job on that night.
“What I tell my trainees is that, if you are approached for sex, probably the safest thing to do in terms of your career is to comply with the request. The worst thing you could possibly do is to complain to the supervising body, because then, as in Caroline’s position, you can be sure that you will never be appointed to a major public hospital.”
The comments brought a wave of condemnation from feminist groups and those involved in combating sexual violence in Australia.
But in a follow-up interview with ABC, McMullin stressed her comments were not intended to approve of sexual assault, merely to point out the grim realities faced by many young women doctors in a deeply sexist professional environment.
“Of course I don’t condone any form of sexual harassment and the advice that I gave to potential surgical trainees was irony, but unfortunately that is the truth at the moment, that women do not get supported if they make a complaint,” she said.
“And that’s where the problem is, so what I’m suggesting is that we need a solution for that problem, not to condone that behaviour. It’s not dealt with properly: women still feel that their careers are compromised if they complain, just like rape victims are victimised if they complain.”
McMullin has also found some measure of support for within the profession. In a post on her personal blog, one Melbourne-based registrar, Dr Ashleigh Witt, described a professional world in which sexual harassment – everything from unwanted advances to comments about her appearance – was endemic.
She wrote: “Dr McMullin is not the problem here. She is simply the messenger. The problem here is a system where reporting sexual harassment is vehemently discouraged. A system where a young doctor successfully takes her assailant to court and is never employed by that system again. A system where big names have stood up this week and said sexual harassment is not a problem in medicine.”
On Monday, the president of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons said bullying was a bigger problem than sexual harassment and there was no evidence of complainants harming their careers.
Professor Michael Grigg described McMullin’s comments as “appalling”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. He described the comments as demeaning to surgeons of both genders: “The inference is that this is what successful female surgeons and trainees have done in the past and this is deeply insulting.
“Unfortunately, instances of sexual harassment and indeed bullying in general occur in society, but encouraging non-reporting serves only to perpetuate it.”