Dr. Asafu-Adjei on the future for women in sexual medicine

In this video, Denise Asafu-Adjei, MD, MPH, recaps her session at the 24th Annual Fall Scientific Meeting of Sexual Medicine Society of North America meeting titled, “Challenges Facing Women in Sexual Medicine Part 2 – Future”. Asafu-Adjei is a urologist at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Video Transcript:

We highlighted some of the present and past challenges that we've had for women in sexual medicine. It stems from mentorship challenges, some disparities when it comes to compensation, opportunities, etc. But I think we recognize [these], and now that we're putting some of these issues on the forefront, our colleagues–male colleagues and other counterparts––are taking note that these are things that are actually repelling some women for the field. But the future does look bright. My talk focused on what we can look toward in the future. I do think that we have been leveraging opportunities like conferences to have meaningful discussions about these topics and see where we are and how we can get better. So, I'm pretty optimistic that although we've had a lot of issues in the past, and we are not quite there, I think our trajectory is certainly going in the right direction to ensure that we have more women in sexual medicine, but also to ensure that there are no gender disparities and that we have just as many opportunities as our male colleagues. And ultimately, for the patients that we treat, we want to make sure that there is some equality when it comes to that representation for our field. I'm excited, and the future's bright.

This transcription has been edited for clarity.