By Natalie D’Alessandro, BCom, MBA
Can you spot the basic moves blokes use when they cannot understand sexism?
When conversations about gender equity surface in the cannabis industry, a familiar pattern emerges.
Actual data is presented. Structural issues are named, the science is explained. And then, almost on cue, the discussion is redirected away from the problems; no discussion on how to fix them.
I recently shared a personal post on LinkedIn about my personal experiences with sexism, it went a little something like this:
Women are expected to:
*explain sexism
*experience sexism
*recover from sexism
*remain relational while naming sexism
*fix sexism
Whelp.
And now there's research that shows sexism changes women's brains.
It goes on to share some feelings and questions. and an article with research that shows structural sexism has measurable effects on women’s brains, mental health, and healthcare outcomes.
"A large study analysing over 7,800 brain scans across 29 countries found that societal gender imbalances physically change women's brains. The research showed that women living in countries with higher gender inequality had thinner cortical thickness in brain regions associated with emotional control, resilience and stress-related disorders such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder."
Rather than engaging with the issue of sexism, this is what one comment said (condensed for brevity)
- “I judge individuals, not women.”
- “Competence wins.”
- “I lived in Japan; there’s a female Prime Minister.”
- “I have daughters.”
None of these statements address the data. Nor the issue. Not one.
Women are so used to getting these kinds of responses; it's probably one reason why so few women are willing to bring the issue up.
I wanted to take the time to explain why these kinds of responses are not only unhelpful, but also predictable.
Women have heard your stories all before; it's time for something new.
Individual Morality vs Systemic Reality
The first move is a category error: conflating individual ethics with systemic analysis.
No one is arguing that men, as individuals, are morally deficient. Although, now you mention it, as at 30 June 2025, males accounted for 92% of all adult prisoners in Australia.
No one was asking for automatic victimhood or moral authority based on identity. The discussion is about how systems behave when power, resources, and visibility are unevenly distributed over time.
Healthcare conferences, leadership pipelines, research funding, and product development are not individuals. They are systems.
And systems can produce biased outcomes even when populated by well-intentioned people.
Saying “I judge individuals on merit” does nothing to explain why equally qualified women are consistently underrepresented on stages, in trials, and in decision-making roles.
Merit cannot “win” if it is not equally recognised or required.
The False Equivalence Trap
The second move is false equivalence: suggesting that analysing gendered outcomes is the same as judging people based on height, attractiveness, or other immutable traits.
Gender is not a neutral personal characteristic in healthcare. It is a predictor of access, treatment quality, research inclusion, pain management, and health outcomes. Decades of evidence, including the research cited, show that women experience systematically different outcomes precisely because gender shapes how institutions respond to them.
Equating this with arbitrary personal traits trivialises structural inequality and avoids confronting its consequences.
The Anecdote as Escape Hatch
“I lived in Japan. There’s a female Prime Minister.”
This is anecdote substitution, using a single example to dismiss population-level data. The existence of individual women in power does not negate structural patterns.
Even the research cited explicitly addresses this point: countries can have visible female leaders while still maintaining deep structural inequities that harm women’s health, economic security, and wellbeing. Visible exceptions usually always coexist with deep structural inequality.
Exceptions do not disprove systems. They highlight how hard it is to overcome them.
The Daughter Defence
“I have daughters” is not an argument. It is a declaration of proximity.
Having daughters does not confer expertise in gendered systems, nor does it engage with evidence showing how sexism operates biologically, psychologically, and institutionally.
It also subtly recentres the conversation away from women as autonomous adults and back toward women as someone’s children, objects of concern rather than agents with lived experience.
Good intentions for your own family are not the same as good faith engagement.
Why This Matters in Healthcare and Cannabis Specifically
This is a healthcare issue.
The research shared shows that structural sexism:
- Alters women’s brain structure through chronic stress
- Worsens mental health outcomes
- Leads to inferior pain management and clinical care
- Produces long-term public health costs
In a AUD$1B cannabis industry that positions itself as patient-centred and progressive, failing to address gender inequity is not neutral. It directly undermines clinical outcomes, research integrity, and ethical credibility.
Talking about stigma on one hand for plant medicine, while ignoring it on the other for gender equity is incoherent.
What Engagement Actually Looks Like
Engaging in good faith would mean:
- Addressing the evidence presented, not substituting personal anecdotes
- Acknowledging that systems can disadvantage groups without villainising individuals
- Accepting that leadership carries responsibility for correcting structural imbalance
- Recognising that “waiting for change” is not a fair strategy in healthcare systems
When responses sidestep these points, they don’t “pressure-test the logic.” They avoid all logic.
And avoidance, however politely framed, does not fix inequity.
And in healthcare, gender equity is non-negotiable.