An entrenched, sexist culture at many veterans hospitals is driving away female veterans and lags far behind the gains women have made in the military in recent years, according to an article on The New York Times website.
The VA has worked to hire more women’s healthcare providers, fix basic privacy problems in the exam rooms and expanding service to women in rural areas, but sexual harassment remains a major problem.
Some centers have removed benches from entryways so that men no longer have a place to linger and badger women, or have created separate facilities, like the one in Texas.
Every center now has at least two providers focused on women’s health and nearly 6,000 providers have been trained in the practice; about 98 percent of them are women.