First, the details. There's a private group on Facebook called the "Physician Moms Group", which has roughly 60,000 members. Full disclosure: my wife is a physician mom and a member of the PMG.

It is a highly active group – with 415 new posts a day on average. Discussion is wide-ranging…

In 2016, a survey was posted that touched on several domains: the perception of discrimination, mechanism of discrimination, burnout, and recommendations for changes.

5782 physician moms took the survey. The authors think this was a response rate of around 17%, but this is nearly impossible to estimate. Facebook's algorithm does not display all posts to all members of the group, but rather based on how "active" an individual is. Clearly, responder bias is at play here – women who felt strongly about the survey question, in either direction, are more likely to answer – but the extent of this bias is hard to gauge.

But the results are nevertheless stark. 78% of the respondents reported some discrimination. Two-thirds reported gender discrimination and 36% reported maternal discrimination (which was discrimination due to maternity leave or breastfeeding).

Younger women, those with young children, and those with more children were more likely to report discrimination.

But what form did this discrimination take?