Table 2.

Participants reported a range of sex- and gender-based harassment and discrimination

Category of harassment or discrimination	Exemplar quotation
Microaggression∗	“[The surgeons] would be asking opinions on what to do with people. And I would say ‘This guy should be managed medically. You should not take him to surgery.’ And they’d be like, ‘Oh yea.’ Then one of the male cardiologists would say ‘Yea, you shouldn’t take him to surgery.’ As soon as the guy said it . . . that’s what we’re going to do, but if I said it? Not so much.” (P12)
Sexual innuendo	“He said to me . . . ‘We’re going to ride her like a rented mule’ . . . he said it like it was funny, but also like it was a bit of a threat.” (P10) “When I got pregnant . . . the comment was ‘I guess [we] didn’t do a good job on the call schedule’ . . . the joke was that we were home too many nights together or else I wouldn’t be pregnant” (P07)
Maternal discrimination	“When you are in the [specialty] lab . . . there’s extra lead, it’s double heavy . . . they would make me stand there until I almost passed out, they wouldn’t give me a stool when I was four, five months pregnant. And then they would make fun of me when I had to sit down . . . [one cardiologist said] ‘Better not show up to my lab looking like that, pregnant and having to sit” (P10)
Sexual harassment†	“. . . so he walked up from behind and comes around me . . . and he says ‘You look as good from the back as you do from the front.’” (P12) “I would call at night about a patient that was having a heart attack and he would be like ‘I’m naked in the on-call room, why don’t you come and join me?’, stuff like that, or ‘I’m in the bathtub and I’m naked, splash splash,’ like, really inappropriate” (P15)
Sexual assault‡	“Well, I got felt up as a medical student . . . by staff . . . when I was on elective” (P02) “[My attending physician] took me into the team room and . . . hugged me and kissed me” (P10) “[An attending] took his stethoscope and slapped me on the ass with it” (P15)

^∗“Brief and commonplace verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages about historically stigmatized groups” which may be intentional or unintentional.¹⁴

^†“Any behaviour that polices and reinforces traditional heterosexual gender norms,” including “continuously interrupt(ing) a female employee during meetings,” “commenting on her physical appearance in a way that sets her apart from male employees,” “leering or inappropriate staring,” and “bragging about sexual prowess.”¹²

^‡“Any unwanted act of a sexual nature that is imposed on another person without their consent.”²⁸