Documentary and show name: Healthcare Gender Bias in the Modern Era

Executive Producer: Michael Buxbaum

Producers: Alexandra Buxbaum, Kris Tripplaar

Content Contributors: In development – interviews, video, stills research studies, healthcare trade shows and events

Funding and Grants: In development

Targeted release and show date: Fall 2025

Documentary description and overview:

The international project documents the modern era challenges for women in healthcare from three perspectives and viewpoints:

1. The providers of healthcare – Patients treated by female doctors have a significantly lower mortality rate and re-admission rate than those patients treated by male doctors according to a cross sectional study by the Journal of the America Medical Association (JAMA). Yet in a nationwide study, women physicians earned 40% less per hour than men nationwide and $100,000 less annually. This study is supported by a national survey of 65,000 physicians by Doximity, a social networking platform for health care professionals, that shows female doctors earn $105,000 less per year on average than their male counterparts in the same positons.

2. Funding and research – While investment in women’s health studies has improved, it still significantly lacks that of male health studies and research. Until the mid-1990s, clinical research was done almost exclusively on men and the results were extrapolated to women. So women are still often being judged against a “male model” when it comes to many conditions. This impacts treatments, medications and outcomes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      The Physician’s Health Study, for example, was initiated in 1982 to examine the effect of aspirin on cardiovascular disease. The study enrolled 22,000+ participants… Not a single one of them was female. For many years, it was simply assumed that women would react to drugs and exposures (like cigarette smoke) in a reasonably similar way as men do. Their inclusion in clinical studies would thereby only introduce unnecessary complications from the female hormonal cycle. Although this made studies with men in this sense simpler, it unfortunately caused them to be ungeneralizable to the population at large – again negatively impacting outcomes for female patients.
3. Healthcare gender treatment bias – A recent study by the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health, found that only 39% of women who suffer cardiac arrest in a public place were given lifesaving CPR, versus 45% of men – and men were 23% more likely to survive.

A survey conducted in early 2019 by TODAY found that more than one-half of women, compared with one-third of men, believe gender discrimination in patient care is a serious problem. One in five women say they have felt that a health care provider has ignored or dismissed their symptoms, and 17% say they feel they have been treated differently because of their gender— compared with 14% and 6% of men, respectively.

Studies show that women’s perceptions of gender bias are correct. Compared with male patients, women who present with the same condition may not receive the same evidence-based care. In several key areas, such as cardiac care and pain management, women may get different treatment, leading to poorer outcomes.

Hope for the future: How do we change, move forward and solve the identified problems and biases in the system? What can we do as patients, practitioners and the public to contribute to a more equitable system that rewards successful outcomes regardless of gender?

The mission of the project is to both educate and highlight the still current gender biases in the health system and explore the remedies and options being explored and implemented to providing equity in research, funding and treatment.

For question on the project – to contribute content – or to help fund the effort, please contact us at…

+1 312-226-5902

info@documentaryarts.com or

media@globalphotowire.com  

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