#Metoo Hospital: “I imagine her with a whip and boots”, when Agnès Buzyn was a victim of sexism from medical professors

Un témoignage fort de l'ancienne médecin, qui fut ministre de la Santé de 2017 à 2020. Midi Libre – SYLVIE CAMBON

In a documentary broadcast this Sunday, May 5 on M6, the former Minister of Health recounts what she encountered when she became a professor of hematology, at the age of 40, at ;Necker hospital. Victim of harassment and denigration, she abandoned her job four years later.

"Being reminded of a sexual fantasy was excruciating!"While the #Metoo Hospital movement has been shaking the medical community for several weeks, former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn testifies in a documentary broadcast this Sunday, May 5 on M6, "Des blouses not so white" from the sexism and harassment situations she suffered in her career as a doctor at the public hospital.

Avant d’être ministre de la santé, Agnès Buzyn a eu une brillante carrière de médecin en hématologie à l'hôpital public. Du fait de son poste à haute responsabilité, elle va subir des violences sexistes pendant 4 ans qui vont la pousser à quitter son métier de médecin…… pic.twitter.com/UbvXC6yOQi

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"The president of the medical community said, yes, Agnès Buzyn came to see me in my office to talk to me about her candidacy for professorship. It’s funny, every time I see her come into my office, I imagine her with a whip and boots. Finally it’s incredible! Amazing! " says the hematology specialist, who became a full professor even though she had been a doctor for twenty years.

"There were 32 members, 32 men"

The day he was appointed, "I entered the room, there were 32 members, 32 men. It was 2003, I was 40 years old. It was that day that I realized the anomaly. I said to myself how is it that in a hospital group which includes the Georges Pompidou European Hospital, the Necker Hospital, the Cochin Hospital, how is it that for a commission which must identify the future managers of the hospital, how come they only found 32 men and no women? And then I understood that ;there was a serious malfunction."

"They couldn’have a woman hierarchically above them"

From then on, she will arouse the hostility of some of her colleagues. "From one day to the next, while I am the same person, as I prescribe the same things, that I do the same job as two days before, the fact of having a title drives them crazy. And all of a sudden I feel immense aggression from my colleagues, immense. In fact I felt that men could not stand having a woman hierarchically above them."

"I’was pre-suicidal"

She will then become a target, and suffer four years of harassment which will destroy her vocation. "I thought I was going to die, honestly, it was such violence, such exclusion… I was exhausted. Honestly I think that if I hadn't had children, at that time, I was really pre-suicidal, it was getting so crazy that I decided to extract myself from my job as a doctor."

Today still, recalls 70 % of active university and hospital practitioners are still men while&nbsp ;more than one in two doctors is a woman.