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Board-certified pediatrician and certified coach Jessie Mahoney discusses her article, “Why don’t women in medicine support each other?” She explores how scarcity, competition, and cultural conditioning have discouraged women physicians from advocating for themselves and one another. Jessie shares how authentic connection, praise, and recommendations can shift the culture of medicine toward abundance and mutual growth. Viewers will learn how small acts of support, like recognition, referrals, and celebration, can transform careers, confidence, and the collective well-being of women in medicine.

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today we welcome back Jessie Mahoney, pediatrician and coach. Today’s KevinMD article is, “Why don’t women in medicine support each other?” Jessie, welcome back to the show.

Jessie Mahoney: Thanks so much for having me back.

Kevin Pho: All right. Tell us what this latest article’s about.

Jessie Mahoney: This article is about what may be a hidden phenomenon, or I’ve discovered is not hidden: that women in medicine don’t support each other very well. It’s something that I have known since I began in medicine, but it is something that I have only become brave enough to talk about now. It’s in part because I do retreats for women doctors, and I just hear time and time again their stories. The thing that we are most disappointed in is that our fellow women in medicine haven’t supported us.

I’ve been researching why we aren’t supporting each other, what’s happening, and trying to figure out if we can understand better why it’s happening so we can work to change it. I don’t think it’s on purpose. It comes from many of those external pressures in medicine. When we put it out in the open, it can be helpful. My experience with doing that in very small private spaces is that it is very helpful. It gives people this tremendous sense of relief that they didn’t do something wrong, that it’s a cultural phenomenon that we really can change if we want.

Kevin Pho: Can you share some of the stories that you’ve heard on your retreats that really show how women in medicine don’t support each other?

Jessie Mahoney: I can share other stories, and I will share one of my own stories, which I still hold. This is repeated in different flavors with so many women who come to retreats. Especially when you are pregnant, other women are the hardest about needing time for appointments or needing time for IVF, or if you’re having complications. When I was pregnant as a med student, the person that was hardest on me was a female chief resident.

The issue there is that people make a lot of sacrifices around child-rearing, and many women in medicine have trouble with infertility. When someone else is pregnant, it creates a difficult scenario. Men, who feel like they don’t understand it so well, are more compassionate and more forgiving.

As women in medicine, there’s very much a scarcity mindset, a scarcity of time with your own family or a scarcity of energy. When someone else has something going on in their life, even if it’s a death in the family, maybe you didn’t get to take time off for a death in your family. You feel frustrated and angry, and it weighs on you. We don’t show up as our best selves. When we’re extremely depleted and have no time, we don’t show up as our best selves.

Part of why it’s different for women is, for better or worse, women take on those family responsibilities and extended family responsibilities, and they are the one who is bearing the children. They may be the one who needs time to breastfeed. Medicine wasn’t built for women. We’ve talked about that before.

Changes need to happen. For those of us, myself included, where those changes didn’t happen for us, we think, “How come it’s different now?” That comes from our change resistance, but also our scarcity mindset. There are not enough people to fill in. If this person is out, it will impact me, and I am already stretched as much as I can stretch.

While no one intends to show up that way, it’s often the women leaders in medicine who got to leadership by achieving, not by supporting others. If they did, they might be judged. That has become the culture where we judge our women colleagues almost more harshly.

Kevin Pho: Has anything changed over the last few years? We always hear demographically more than half of the medical school class are women. We hear stories on my site and on your coaching retreats, on podcasts, where issues related to women in medicine are being more heard. As stories are being shared, do you see any improvement over the last few years because of those trends?

Jessie Mahoney: I keep thinking yes. Then yesterday I heard someone who’d had tremendous issues in the last few years, all in the midst of that. Are there pockets of it? Yes. The more we bring it to the limelight and shine a spotlight on it, it is beginning to change. It has to change one woman physician at a time. We have to feel safe enough to trust and amplify and change.

We were taught that we had to achieve and that we had to potentially achieve more in order to be seen or considered in medicine, which has been predominantly male-dominated, even though now there are more women than men in many medical school classes. It wasn’t built that way. The message that women get, and many women who are now in leadership roles got, is that we had to achieve more to become a leader in medicine or to succeed. We’ve always been focused on that achievement, not necessarily advocating or amplifying the women below us.

We want to, and sometimes we feel like we’re being protective by saying, “You have to not share this and you can’t ask for anything if you need it.” I remember being on a California Medical Association Committee where we were talking about whether women residents should get six weeks of leave after having a baby. I pointed out that was California law and they’re considered disabled. The conversation was, “How will we cover the residency? How will we cover the shifts?” This is a law, so we have to figure out how to change the system. But being the woman who speaks up there, you often put yourself in a spot where people judge you. You’re considered potentially lazy or you don’t care about the system. It’s hard to stand out and speak up about it. Then our own brain phrases get in our heads about it as well.

If you are advocating and supporting other women, there is this scarcity of room for women. We know how few women leaders there are, and therefore, you have to be thoughtful and careful. I think that we could change it. What I have seen is that those women who have been brave enough to stand up and speak up for other women have become quite successful because there’s such a need.

Can we each change the culture where we’re generous and kind, recognizing that this is our role in medicine: to support other women? I just think we’ve gone through such challenges that so many of us are closed, thinking, “I’m even afraid to still be a woman in medicine.” We think that’s not true anymore, and yet I see it time and time again. What’s shifted is that it’s more the women who are making it harder on other women because that’s what we watched and that’s what we experienced. How do we shift and be brave enough to change it, to be a culture that’s friendly for that? The systems are not super friendly for that either. You have to go out on a limb, and it’s sometimes harder as a woman to go out on a limb than it would be for someone who felt that level of confidence and acceptance the whole way along.

Kevin Pho: In terms of demonstrating that lack of support, is it primarily covering for women because they have to take time off after pregnancy and for IVF treatments? Are there other ways where it’s shown that women don’t support each other in medicine?

Jessie Mahoney: I would say we tend to not speak up and amplify other women and talk about what they have done. We tend to judge other women in our department for whatever decisions they might make. We hold other women, it sounds strange, but to a higher standard. As women, we treat it, we talked about in one of these podcasts, as judgment as a sign of excellence. It comes from that same energy that we see it as excellence, protecting them and protecting our reputation, ours and theirs. Yet what I see is a lot of silent suffering.

Could we support them for leadership roles outwardly and amplify them? Could we speak up? We rarely speak up on behalf of other women saying, “They’re doing this great thing over here. You should try it.” It really does come from the scarcity sense that there isn’t enough room, and also that we might be judged for amplifying something that is woman-focused.

That piece is beginning to change. But within the medicine systems, within the feedback evaluations and smaller departments, people may have their one person that they feel safe with, but the culture of vulnerability is not there. When we can shift that, we will also be supporting our women leaders. There are pockets of it. Certainly, there are medical organizations that have women CEOs and women in high spots. But even there, there are also pockets where it’s not the norm.

Until we start to talk about it and say that to flip it, we almost need to create a more welcoming culture. How can we welcome people in? We were all taught in my generation that women had to let their work speak for themselves. Then we perpetuate that. We’re not supporting because we’re just assuming they know that it’s also good. It’s a way of saying there’s enough room for all of us, and we can shine more by shining a light on those behind us and supporting them in whatever it is.

Sometimes people will want to create something new, step into a role that’s different, create a role, or create a program. We tend to be more hesitant because what we’re offering as women in medicine is different than the old culture. It’s also our resistance to change.

Kevin Pho: One of the things that you talked about in your piece was the role of mentorship. Talk to us about how female physician mentorship can help with this.

Jessie Mahoney: It helps tremendously if you have a mentor you can trust. Part of this is setting up a mentor system. A lot of mentorship programs within institutions are very well-intentioned, but you get this random match. Your mentor is often someone in your department who is also potentially responsible for your feedback or whether you get a promotion or not.

Figuring out how we can set up mentorships, mentorships in some of the broader spaces across institutions can be valuable. Also, individually as women, as we put ourselves in spaces where there are people in different generations of medicine, whether it’s a subspecialty group, a retreat, coaching, or even within institutions. We do a lot of women in medicine events where you can find your mentor. We can be assigned someone who helps direct us, but there’s a lot of conflict there, and you don’t necessarily fit with them. Can we create more spaces where people can be inspired and motivated?

We also need mentorship training so we understand how we’re showing up, how that is received by other people, and so we can learn and begin to show up in different ways that feel more supportive. We’re not taught that in medicine. We’re taught to compete. We’re taught to achieve rather than to create comfortable spaces that foster growth.

We talk about it in medical education, but our medical education system is judgmental, achievement-oriented, and judgment-oriented. How can we create a space that’s about healing for those who are all in this space together? Supporting other women is really healing, also for those of us who’ve had traumatic experiences along the way. To feel like you could change it, you also have to be healed to some degree to do that.

A big piece of it is healing my mid-fifties generation of women so that we can create those ripples down below. Potentially having people that are farther ahead, that are not in the same organization, that are not in the same specialties, because they can be a mentor for a life in medicine, which is not just practicing medicine, but how do you have a family, how do you care for parents, and how do you live in this world that wasn’t necessarily built for you?

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Jessie Mahoney, pediatrician and coach. Today’s KevinMD article is, “Why don’t women in medicine support each other?” Jessie, let’s have some take-home messages you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.

Jessie Mahoney: If we could change the way we support one another and consistently, courageously (because it takes courage), and unapologetically support other women and not worry so much about how we’ll be perceived or whether it will impact us, things would dramatically change. We don’t have to wait. We’re always waiting for a system to accept us, yet we can begin by supporting and accepting people above us and below us, pulling out that judgment, and instead creating more of that community, family spirit in medicine.

Kevin Pho: Jessie, as always, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight. Thanks again for coming back on the show.

Jessie Mahoney: Thanks so much for having me.