When Dr Joan Arakkal chooses to specialise in orthopaedics while training in India, a field traditionally occupied by men, she slots into the world of bones with relative ease.
But when her career takes her to the UK, and then Australia, she encounters the `bonemen' - a boy's club whose members are easily identified in the hospital corridors by their loud voices and self-assured swagger. Their medieval attitudes wield a stranglehold on the development of orthopaedics, compromising patient care.
Joan is totally unprepared for the obstacles and prejudices she encounters - but the tables are turned when she suffers a health scare of her own, which ultimately gives her the perspective she needs to speak and fight without fear.
A provocative reflection on the discrimination, sexism and cartelisation entrenched in the surgical community, and particularly the world of orthopaedics, Slice Girls shines light on a surgical path that is made needlessly challenging for women, and finds that while women are ready for surgery, it forces the question: is surgery ready for women?
