Many of her recommendations were derived from our recently published paper “The Development of Best Practice Recommendations to Support the Hiring, Recruitment and Advancement of Women Physicians in Emergency Medicine.” A lot of these suggestions are, in fact, gender neutral, with broad impact across the physician workforce, including:

• Experiment with changes in practices that are out of step with the realities of modern life and work to create environments that foster success for all the physicians in your group.
• Include positives about emergency medicine opportunities for work-life balance in recruitment.
• Ensure that maternity/paternity leave policies are in place.

An article like Dr. Clem’s is meant to be inspiring, but as an active member of the Academy for Women in Academic Emergency Medicine (AWAEM) and the American Association of Women Emergency Physicians (AAWEP) and a vociferous advocate for gender equity in emergency medicine, I figured I was unlikely to derive new inspiration from the piece. And then I read the online comments.

Dr. Clem’s article elicited some colorful responses; here are just a few:

• “I don’t support the subsidizing of co-workers’ life choices.”
• “If you are asserting that medicine is at risk for not surviving because women now make up 60 percent of medical students, perhaps we should seek out more men to enter the field.”
• “If you CHOOSE to have kids, try to be super-mom, expect your colleagues to work around you and your personal life, you have made yourself less marketable.”

These comments were neither surprising nor enlightening to me, but they were viscerally inspiring. They served as an immediate and obvious reminder that many of my colleagues still believe “every man for himself” policies are the acceptable and that gender equity is a burden without benefit. And that feeling, the energy I derive from trying do something about this issue, is why I work so tirelessly as the editor in chief of FemInEM.

Support System
Launched in 2015, FemInEM (www.feminem.org) is an open-access resource for women working in emergency medicine, where we discuss, discover, and affect common experiences. Through deliberate and engaging dialogue, we explore a variety of issues that support the development and advancement of our colleagues and ourselves. FemInEM aims to address gender disparities in a positive way, empowering both male and female physicians. It also celebrates and promotes workplace flexibility policies for everyone practicing emergency medicine.

FemInEM, and its associated social media affiliations (@feminemtweets, Facebook), have been using positivity and peer support to address and overcome the traditional biases facing women in emergency medicine.