After doing more than just “watching” Grey’s Anatomy, and actually understanding what composes and makes this show such a success, I decided to do a blog post based on how has has gender representation made this long-time running show an accomplishment.

In first instance some may say Grey’s Anatomy female power caught a lot of people’s attention, and some other may say it is the drama related to the female to male relationships that actually make it interesting. However, for me, is the fact that Grey’s Anatomy has managed to tackle down medicine’s gender biased day to day image what has inspired the audience to continue watching and to make a difference when fighting for women rights and equality.

To support the statement presented in the previous paragraph, there are several elements of the show that we could analyze in order to understand how Grey’s Anatomy tumbles down gender biased representation in the area of the medicine. First of all, female characters are the principal “hard-core” workers of the show. Going from the chief of surgery to the head of each speciality, and even to the interns that just arrived, there’s always a majority of female characters that stand out to be better doctors than many of the men who end up giving up or feeling nervous next to their co-workers (just as it happened with Alex at the very beginning of the show where he felt intimidated by Meredith and her innate ability). Additionally, the show also treats sexism in medicine as a principal theme that tends to be ignored in most real-life cases. In one of the last episodes that have been released, Miranda Bailey (the chief of surgery) gets a heart attack. Through this event, she is taken to the hospital where she has to address the fact that “cleaning the house”, “taking care of the children”, or “wasting too much time doing chores”, weren’t stress factors  (that could’ve caused her sickness) present in her life, as she actually worked the hardest she could. This is very important as this image has come to be the reflection of many women’s life in the contemporary world.

No caption needed. Dr. Bailey breaking gender stereotypes to its fullest

In conclusion, if there is a way to make a show successful nowadays, breaking gender representation biased image in professional roles is definitely the way to go. Grey’s Anatomy (and Shonda Rhyme’s shows in general) have managed to show this for over 10 years of emotional and wonderful seasons that have created a special bond between women who aspire to thrive in life and do more than what everyone simply tends to believe they “should do”.