As a Black female physician, I do not feel that Women's History Month includes me -- but it should.
Each year, as the month passes, I am reminded of the fact that, as a Black woman, I am very hesitant to join women's movements or initiatives without ample research into their background and reputation. Frankly, I don't trust them. This year, I thought about why.
Some time ago, I was working on a hospital unit with very sick patients. It could have been an empowering experience for me as a woman because our physician team was all women. Unfortunately, it was anything but.
As I left a patient room one day, I rounded the corner and saw my white female colleagues publicly berating an extremely shy and incredibly knowledgeable Black female pharmacist. A few other female physicians -- non-Black people of color with greater race privilege -- observed silently.
We were supposed to be working together.
They stood in the middle of the hospital hallway, with patient rooms nearby, and yelled at the pharmacist for not doing something they wanted in a particular way. That "something" was neither life-threatening nor urgent. Even worse, my colleagues had not been clear about what exactly they wanted ahead of time. I have seen this racial dynamic play out in scenarios like this throughout my life as a Black woman more times than I can count -- both while practicing and outside the walls of the hospital.
My blood began to boil. Despite being the most junior member of the medical team, I couldn't ignore the situation.
I stepped in and said to the pharmacist: "You are doing a phenomenal job. This unit is so tough." I winked at her. She knew. I knew. I turned to my white female colleagues: "And you all are being incredibly rude." The pharmacist burst into tears, excusing herself briefly. No one apologized to her. Instead, my colleagues walked away, muttering how much better the other (white female) pharmacist had been.
Recently, I ran into this pharmacist outside the hospital. She stopped me and said, "You don't know how much you helped me that day. This is why we need Black women in medicine. You saw me, and you uplifted me." My eyes watered and I blushed a bit, embarrassed. "I tried," I told her. And I always will.
Black women are often pushed to the margins and disrespected in the healthcare workplace and beyond -- often by other women with greater race privilege, who use it to their advantage. I did not officially report the behavior of those white female colleagues because I knew, from experience, that they could get away with yelling at people in a way that I never could. They are protected in ways that I will never be. That is their privilege.
But here is the ironic part: Those same female doctors who belittled that female pharmacist are the first ones to talk about sexism and the need to uplift women, but they are also the first to exclude and belittle Black women, disregarding the "uplift all women" ideals they claim to have.
So, I am hesitant to join women's movements because, by default, they center white women, or women with greater race privilege, unless they are actively trying to disrupt that norm. This is just one of my stories, one interaction in the hospital. But there are countless other scenarios just like it, in which Black women are demeaned and erased. And it is not just an interpersonal problem, it is a societal problem and a systemic problem.
Women's History Month does not inspire feelings of solidarity and pride within me because often, when we celebrate moments in women's history, it is mostly a celebration of white women's history. We celebrate , commemorating the passage of the 19th amendment, when "women" received the right to vote in 1920. In reality, it was only white women. Women of color did not begin to see true voting rights until more than 40 years later, with the . And even after the official passage of this law, I still had Black family members who were killed trying to register Black women to vote. We celebrate the women's suffrage movement, yet white women suffragists Black women from their movement. And this continues to go on today, most recently with the . We discuss gender wage gaps between men and women without acknowledging that white women still make significantly more than . And amongst physicians, white female physicians continue to than non-white female physicians.
So, this Women's History Month, if you are aiming to be pro-women, you should also be aiming to be anti-racist and anti-racial hierarchy. Because Black women are women too.
is an adult/child psychiatry resident at Yale School of Medicine/Yale Child Study Center, and a member of 51˶'s "The Lab." You can read more of her writing in her column, The Activist Psychiatrist.