ArticleMedical education2025
Beyond inclusion politics: A critical discourse analysis of sex and gender in medical education.
Article in Medical education, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Implementation of the sex and gender curricular assessment and revision toolkit: a mixed-method study.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Incorporating a Veteran's lived and living expertise of sex work and substance use into clinician education.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- When language engenders discomfort.Medical education · 2025Article
- Beyond inclusion politics: A critical discourse analysis of sex and gender in medical education.Medical education · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
introductionMedical training refers frequently to sex and gender, yet these terms are often used vaguely and interchangeably with little critical engagement. We aimed to better understand the key discourses around sex and gender in medical training.
methodsAll verbal and written instances of gendered/sexed language, occurring in lectures, slides and provided written materials, within 1 year of preclerkship medical education at a single institution in Canada were recorded autoethnographically by a medical student. We analysed these instances using critical discourse analysis informed by anticolonial, feminist and queer theoretical perspectives, particularly contrasting the concepts of governmentality and ungovernability to better understand how sex and gender are deployed in medical training.
resultsDespite the proliferation of ostensibly queer- and trans-positive content in medical curricula, sex and gender were frequently communicated inconsistently and imprecisely. In addition to, and perhaps as a result of, this inconsistent use, we uncovered three key discourses of (1) gender policing, (2) misogyny and (3) gender legibility. Collectively, these discourses can illustrate how medical education governs and reinforces gender norms. DISCUSSION: The repetitive and everyday use of ill-defined and uncritical gendered and sexed language can be seen to discursively uphold systems of cisheteropatriarchy and transphobia within medicine. Trans and intersex bodies cannot be considered addendums to be tacked on to a foundation of cisnormative and inaccurate teaching in medical education. Institutional attempts to improve curricula must go beyond the addition of new modules, which can be undermined by otherwise cisheteropatriarchal understandings of sex and gender.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.