Things the male-driven healthcare industry normalizes — but actually aren't normal for women who work inside it

The healthcare system wants you to believe that feeling good as a practitioner — truly loving what you do — is on the other side of the next credential, the next $10K month, the next glowing patient testimonial.

And those things are good. None of them are wrong to want.

But somewhere in the pursuit of all of them, a question gets lost: how do you actually feel inside of it?

I've been inside this system for over 20 years. I believed all of it. I did all of it — to a T. And I still wasn't happy. I still wasn't healthy.

And in the years since, I've worked with thousands of women navigating their own version of that same quiet reckoning inside their healthcare careers.

So when I tell you this is not the full story, I'm not guessing.

I have receipts — and they come in the form of women telling me things they tell nobody else, in Zoom meetings they'd never tell a coworker they scheduled, because they might be hated on for seemingly hating on the profession they once fell in love with.

They tell me stories of all they love about their careers in healthcare. And also stories of --

• Tears they shed in their cars before walking into work, because the thought of facing another set of patients who need them to fix everything (when they have kids at home who need them, when their own bodies are healing from postpartum, autoimmune disease, or in the throes of perimenopause) is almost more than they can hold.

  
  

• Glancing at the clock before a patient session has even started, already counting down the minutes until lunch — provided they even get one and don't have to spend the whole thing catching up on notes

  
  

• Being so tired of the unwritten pressure to compete with other women in Facebook groups for referrals, reputation, and jockeying to the top of chat threads for who has the most nuanced and innovative approach to patient care (because god forbid you show anything but "it depends" nuance these days)

  
  

When something in you says I'm not okay while another part of you says but your patients love you, you should be so grateful for being able to do this every day — both can be true. But unlike what the personal development world preaches in "just being more grateful," you don't have to ignore the first part and only focus on the second.

And here's the part that really gets under my fingernails.

The same system that handed you the credential has an answer for your own "feeling bad inside the system" too.

It's solution is for you to turn the lens inward.

It'll tell you to meditate more, balance your hormones, move your body, hire a babysitter, build community, work on your mindset and mental health, set better boundaries, unplug your computer and phone and actually take time off.

And again — not bad things. Those are the bare minimum, not the thing that solves the problem.

To be radiantly clear - I'm genuinely all about helping women feel better in their work. That's kind of my whole thing.

But every single one of those answers has something in common: they put it back on you in the name of "empowerment."

They keep you believing that if you just fix the right thing about yourself, the weight of your work will finally lift.

What they don't tell you is that some of that weight was never yours to carry in the first place.

They say burnout is YOUR problem, not a systemic problem. They don't talk about the moral injuries that are now well documented when the expectations put on you by the system are far bigger than any one person can hold.

A quick note before we get into it: this is not a "burn it all down and just blame the system" post. There is a lot of good in healthcare, and plenty of people thriving inside it.

What this is — is a list. A direct one.

Because you cannot heal a systemic wound by asking the people inside it to bleed a little quieter, take a few more deep breaths, and hold the weight of the inequities on their shoulders alone.

So if you've done the work, made the pivots, tried every version of making it fit and fixing yourself — and something in you is still whispering am I crazy? is it just me? how much longer can I keep this up?

It's not just you. And there is something you can do about it. And it doesn't have ot look like chanting more affirmations or just sticking it out.

Let's get into it.

1. What the male-driven system says: You can have it all — the career, the business, the life at home — you just need to prioritize your schedule and ask for help.

Actually: you are the one who helps. Yourself, your kids, your dogs, your spouse. Every single one of those is a full-time you. You will never turn off the tug pulling you in every direction — and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you stop blaming yourself for being exhausted.

2. What the male-driven system says: Working 9-5, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year is how you are most productive and successful

Actually: you're bleeding for up to 15 days a month. You're losing estrogen by the day in perimenopause. You're carrying a baby, breastfeeding, staying home with a sick kid, or raging with PMDD. The standard workday was not built around your body. That was not an accident.

3. What the male-driven system says: More certifications and more letters behind your name make you more reputable and trustworthy

Actually: that's a dick-measuring contest. We don't have dicks. What actually makes you reputable and trustworthy is your ability to connect, to show up with real compassion, and to make your patient feel like you genuinely get them. No acronym on earth teaches that.

4. What the male-driven system says: If you're looking for the doctor, look for the guy in the white coat

Actually: women are 55% of medical school enrollments, 70% of DPT programs, 80% of vet schools, 86% of DNP programs. But sure — go ahead and tell her she shouldn't be parking in the physician lot.

5.  What the male-driven system says: Return to work 1-2 weeks after birth, surgery, or illness — or go unpaid. Positions may not be held longer than that

Actually: a c-section is major abdominal surgery. Tissue healing alone requires 6-8 weeks minimum. Full recovery — physical, mental, emotional, assuming you actually have support, childcare, and resources — takes 3-12 months. The system calls that "extended leave." Your body calls it the bare minimum.

6.  What the male-driven system says: Pumping time is optional. Clock out if your break runs longer than your legally required 30 minutes

Actually: pumping is not optional for a lactating mother. It is a normal biological process no different than using the restroom. Should we require men to clock out for the 15 minutes they spend on their phones on the toilet between patients? Or would you prefer your clinicians just show up in front of a patient with leaking nipples?

7.  What the male-driven system says: If you want to climb the leadership ladder, you just need to work harder, put in your time, and want it more

Actually: women face lower promotion rates, higher attrition, and a career ladder that was built without accounting for IVF, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, perimenopause, or any other biological reality that men will simply never experience. Wanting it more was never the variable.

8.  What the male-driven system says: Women's communal, team-focused strengths are celebrated and valued

Actually: celebrated in the all-hands. Devalued in the performance review. Those same strengths get you assigned to more committees, more mentoring, more scheduling — and fewer promotions. The system has a name for it: office housework. You just call it your job.

9.  What the male-driven system says: Burnout is an individual failure of time management. Have you tried mindfulness? Setting better limits? Work-life balance?

Actually: the WHO defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon — chronic, unmanaged workplace stress. Not a personal psychiatric condition. Telling a woman managing a full clinical load and an unequal second shift at home to fix her "balance" is not wellness advice. It's gaslighting with a meditation app.

10. What the male-driven system says: Tension and competition between women in healthcare is cattiness — a personal, gendered moral failing

Actually: it's a documented byproduct of tokenism. When leadership seats for women get capped at one or two, the system forces women to compete against each other for survival. Male competition gets called ambition and healthy drive. The exact same behavior in women gets pathologized. The system manufactures the scarcity, then blames you for fighting over it.

11. Nearly 40% of women physicians reduce their hours or leave medicine entirely within 6 years of completing residency

Actually: that is not attrition. That is an organized expulsion by a system that refuses to adapt to the majority of the workforce that is literally running it.

What did I miss? Reach out. I'd love to hear about your experience.

And it is not a failure to get curious, ask better questions, and start mapping out what could actually fit — whether that's a different lane inside the system, or something outside it entirely.

I'm Dr. Julie Granger, a DPT (yes, a woman who goes by Doctor) who no longer treats patients and now does this instead.

I help women in healthcare figure out what's next when the career they built stopped fitting the life they actually want to be living. Sometimes that's a shift in how they do patient care. Sometimes it's something else entirely. Usually it's somewhere in the middle.

You get to love what you do without sacrificing the life you want to live — even if that looks nothing like every other cookie-cutter colleague you know.