Robert MacGibbon reflects on persisting attitudes to women in the 1980s.

Women GPs at work 

And we then, I got shortlisted, we went to, they all wanted to meet ‘the wife’ [laughs] so my wife was pretty assertive, I can tell you, and they said, ‘Mrs MacGibbon, I’m sure you’ll be very happy to man the ’phone at the weekends,’ and she said, ‘No, I’ve actually got my own career, thank you very much, no.’ ‘Oh!’ – I bet, I probably didn’t get the job for that, which is great. I didn’t want it in the end. And when she said to them, ‘Well, why aren’t you interviewing women, anyway?’, both male shortlisted, they said, ‘Oh well, you can’t have women in a practice, ’cause they’re always going off and getting pregnant. Ha, ha.’  I mean it was shocking, that was the kind of attitude – we’re talking about forty years ago, hopefully it’s not quite like that now, but it has changed enormously, this gender balance between men and women doctors.