EMN 2021 | Supporting future generations of female hematologists
Meral Beksac, MD, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey, discusses the importance of equality and the challenges faced by female hematologists. Dr Beksac outlines how the advent of telemedicine could help improve the work-life balance for women working in the field of hematological oncology. This interview took place during the 2021 European Myeloma Network (EMN) congress.
Transcript (edited for clarity)
Today is Women’s Day, and it’s a certainly a day for woman who are working actively. And based on the COVID era, we have come to notice that equality really matters. And equality is important not for all gender but for all ethical groups and for all economical income groups, and we know that if there’s no equality then we cannot solve problems.
And female gender worldwide is usually under a subject to under-education and heavier workload and even abuse...
Today is Women’s Day, and it’s a certainly a day for woman who are working actively. And based on the COVID era, we have come to notice that equality really matters. And equality is important not for all gender but for all ethical groups and for all economical income groups, and we know that if there’s no equality then we cannot solve problems.
And female gender worldwide is usually under a subject to under-education and heavier workload and even abuse. But in the Western world, the laws and the administrations are protecting female gender, but this is not sufficient. And when it comes to professional life, our life is not so easy because our work is, we have, both emotional and physically, have to work harder and this results with sacrifice from our sleeping hours, resting hours and even hobbies. And this is recognized by younger people and the younger physicians when they want to select their future academic life, they prefer to choose easier work styles. And for female physicians this is even more important because family life brings on more responsibilities.
But I think during the last year, we have come to notice progress in telemedicine, and I think telemedicine is going to help us in improving our working hours, and it will ease our repetitive life cycle, because it will give us the opportunity to do more things with less time. And also, I think virtual meetings has become more and more easily applicable, although it doesn’t replicate what the face-to-face meetings can do. But we may reduce face-to-face meetings in future with more virtual meetings to continue and this will also give us more time from traveling and also from access to more intense communication.
And certainly, social media has made a big impact on our lifestyle and it gives us the potential, for instance the video journal here, it gives us the possibility to follow meetings even if we cannot attend them. So, I think life is going to be easier, but we need to trust on the society and also our families to give us more support as we have children and other responsibilities.
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