A Poetic Representation: Women in Medicine Are “Able to”

Abstract

The purpose of letters of recommendation is to accentuate the positive attributes of candidates. An archival study examined 291 medical students’ performance evaluations (MSPEs) for male and female medical students written by male and female associate deans of medicine for a highly competitive radiology residency in the Northeast United States. This poetic representation illustrates the author’s emotion to the audience after grappling with disturbing results from the data analysis (Richardson, 2003). Interpretations of the data through a poststructural feminist lens draw on the complexity of the language that remains a constitutive force illustrating reality. “Competent,” part of the Merriam-Webster’s definition of “able,” has a gendered masculine nuance. Even though women physicians represent almost 50% of medical school graduates, there remains questions of what they are “able to” do.