Margarethe Hochleitner

• Univ.-Prof. Dr.
• Head of Department at Innsbruck Medical University

Background The level of experienced sociocultural pressure to have an idealized body can vary depending on a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation. The current study explored whether differences in levels of body appreciation among people with different sexual orientations and gender identities vary because of differing levels of experien...

During hookups some people use coercive tactics to obtain sex from a reluctant partner. The current study explored whether individuals with greater conformity to traditional masculine ideologies (TMIs) are more willing to use coercive and coaxing tactics following sexual rejection than are individuals with less conformity to TMIs. German-speaking p...

Introduction Sexual and gender minority (SGM) people are often found to have lower levels of body appreciation than do cis-heteronormative people. Objectives The current study utilizes the social cure model and the intragroup status and health model to investigate whether identification with a SGM social group and identity centrality (i.e., the de...

Introduction Sexual rejection occurs when a person’s sexual advances are terminated by a potential sexual partner, leading to responses that may disregard the partner’s choice, such as attempts to entice or express resentment. Traditional masculine ideologies (TMIs) could play a role in motivating enticing or resentful responses. TMIs often emphasi...

The goal of affirmative action programs is to establish equal opportunities for women and men. Past research has focused on one type of affirmative action, namely quotas, and found that the implementation of quotas is often met by a backlash from employees. The current study adds to the literature by investigating fairness and importance perception...

Allonormativity Heteronormative ideas about sexuality contain sets of expectations and prescriptions that focus on people’s sexual desire and interests. Heteronormative standards prescribe that people are only attracted to and want to engage sexually with persons of a different gender.¹ Thereby, heteronormativity is often justified as being the nor...

Background Since the ruling handed down by the Austrian Constitutional Court in 2018 intersex variation has been recognized under Austrian law as a “third sex”. In order to ensure that people with intersex variation are not discriminated against based on their group membership affirmative actions (i.e., proactive practices to avert discrimination)...

Frauen erfahren Gewalt in der Familie und Partnerschaft auch in der Schwangerschaft. Hebammen können einen wichtigen Beitrag in der Prävention und Intervention von Gewalt gegen Schwangere und Mütter leisten und an entsprechende Beratungsangebote verweisen. Eine Studie zeigt, welche Herausforderungen Beratungseinrichtung bei der Betreuung von Frauen...

Introduction In Western societies, men may frequently receive messages about ideals of an often unattainable male body through visual media, including pornography. Additionally, men may hold traditional masculinity beliefs that idealize slender and muscular male bodies. Objective The current study analyzed whether pornography consumption was assoc...

Many women and men experience intimate partner violence (IPV) during their lifetime. However, only relatively few people actually seek formal help after such an experience. The current study applied the mediated-moderation model of self-compassion and stigma that has previously been used to explain men’s help-seeking behavior for depressive symptom...

The present study translated the 30-item Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI-30) from English to German. Indices for measurement invariance across gender and sexual orientation, test–retest reliabilities, and indicators of convergent (positive correlations with the Male Role Norms Inventory–Short Form and the Gender Role Conflict Scale–Sh...

Objectives The current study utilized the Gendered Sexuality over the Life Course Model and analyzed whether young adults’ endorsement of gendered sociocultural norms and expectations is linked to feelings at virginity loss and subsequent sexual performance anxiety (SPA). Methods An online cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted among 18...

Objectives The current study utilized the Gendered Sexuality over the Life Course Model and analyzed whether young adults’ endorsement of gendered sociocultural norms and expectations is linked to feelings at virginity loss and subsequent sexual performance anxiety (SPA). Methods An online cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted among 18...

Background High levels of self-compassion might increase men’s willingness to seek formal help, including those men, who rigidly conform to masculinity norms (CMN). However, self-compassion has rarely been considered as an enabling factor for women’s help-seeking intentions. The current study analyzed the links between CMN, self-stigma, self-compas...

Introduction Studies that explain men’s reduced willingness for formal help-seeking for depressive symptoms often did not analyze whether assumed unique barriers, namely, conformity to masculine norms (CMN), reduced self-compassion, and self-stigma are also linked to women’s help-seeking behavior. Objectives The current study analyzed whether CMN,...

Physicians can play a critical role in helping lesbian, gay, and bisexual-identified (LGB) individuals face minority stress. The current questionnaire study among 305 medical students (62.6% women/37.4% men; Mage = 23.4, SD = 3.2) assessed whether medical students learn about LGB-specific concepts at an Austrian medical university. Students reporte...

The time-intensive work of publishing in scientific journals is an important indicator of job performance that is given much weight during promotion procedures for academic positions. The current study applied the job demands–resources model and analyzed whether family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB) moderated associations between work stres...

Introduction Health care practitioners may rely on abstract concepts such as “virginity loss” when assessing emerging adults’ sexual history. Additionally, virginity loss can be an important life event or “a turning point” in a person's sexual life. Sometimes, virginity loss has social implications and can be associated with potential social status...

To date, only a few studies have examined the associations between pornography consumption and sexual functioning. The Acquisition, Activation, Application Model (3AM) indicates that the frequency of pornography consumption and the perceived realism of pornography may influence whether sexual scripts are acquired from viewed pornography. Having sex...

The Work–Family Conflict and Family–Work Conflict Scale (WFC & FWC Scale) is a questionnaire commonly used to assess conflicts that arise when required time devotion and strain for work obligations interfere with family responsibilities (work-family conflict) and conflicts that arise when family responsibilities interfere with work responsiblities...

Gender norms can influence women and men adopting different beliefs toward their own virginity. The current online cross-sectional questionnaire study was applied in a sample of German-speaking heterosexual-identified women (n = 536) and men (n = 181; Mage = 23.6, SD = 3.7). In men negative virginity loss experiences and sexual performance anxiety...

Past research reports that endorsement of the traditional masculinity ideologies (TMIs) is associated with a range of individual, social, or health outcomes. However, the studies of such associations have mostly been conducted in English-speaking samples because validated measures are not available in other languages. The present study analyzed the...

Past research on virginity loss definitions revealed that emerging adults’ definitions of virginity loss are associated with emerging adults’ own sociodemographic characteristics. However, previous research has not systematically studied whether emerging adults applied different criteria for virginity loss depending on the context of the judged beh...

Patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) use various terms when describing their symptoms. Whether gender might influence this has not been investigated so far. The aim of this study was to evaluate possible gender differences in spontaneous descriptions of RLS symptoms. This prospective study, conducted in 100 consecutive German‐speaking RLS pat...

Social comparison processes during pornography consumption and the pressure to adhere to traditional masculinity ideologies about how a male body should look may influence men’s body satisfaction and in turn explain potential associations between pornography consumption and men’s sexual functioning. The current study analyzed whether pornography co...

Background Genital satisfaction has been found to influence women’s sexual experience. We tested the Relational Bodily Experiences Theory (RBET) that predicts associations between women’s genital satisfaction, attachment models, and sexual desire. We extended the model by additionally considering sexual arousal, orgasmic sensation, or the experienc...

Background: Experiencing interpersonal violence and disclosing this experience to physicians can be associated with fear, shame, denial or emotional turmoil. Expressions of such feelings additionally conflict with masculine gender role ideologies and may be experienced as masculine gender role conflict. Masculine gender role conflict is often asso...

The current online-questionnaire study examined physicians’ (N = 135; 51.9% women and 48.1% men) attitudes toward homosexuality and assessed physicians’ barriers to and reasons for asking patients about their sexual orientation at an Austrian university hospital. Only 37.1% of female physicians and 27.7% of male physicians included questions about...

Background Psychological violence is a persistent issue in academic medicine and affects the health and safety of health care workers. This violence is also debated as part of medical culture. Third parties, persons learning about violations after it happened, may provide an understanding of the interplay between gender and psychological violence....

Violence against women (VAW) affects pregnancy, birthing, and puerperium. In this sense, domestic violence (DV) or intimate partner violence (IPV) may increase during pregnancy, sexual child abuse may affect the birthing process, and obstetric violence may occur during birthing. Thus, consideration of violence during pregnancy and puerperium is ess...

Background: Sex and gender are social categories of diversity. Diversity can be perceived with an intersectional framework as it demonstrates the intersecting categories that might contribute to oppression, inequality, power and privilege. This article focused on what aspects were considered in diversity training programmes for health professions a...

Introduction: Diversity-specific differences in health, illness and access to a health system have meanwhile been studied well. Educating medical students offers good leverage for broadening this knowledge within the medical professions. One approach is to use elective subjects. Project Description: The goal of this work is to compare the lecture s...

Introduction: Studies concerning barriers to patient-physician conversations about sexual health or, specifically, sexual functioning fail to go beyond descriptive analyses of such barriers. Aim: To identify barriers that predict the frequency of patient-physician conversations concerning sexual health or sexual functioning. Methods: An online...

Background Many physical diseases are associated with sexual health problems. Studies concerning physicians’ barriers to patient-physician conversations concerning sexual health often fail to go beyond descriptive analyses of such barriers. The current study focused on finding those barriers that best predict the frequency of patient-physician conv...

Studies have continuously shown that fewer women than men achieve leadership positions in academic medicine. In the current study we explored gender differences in clinical position among academic physicians at three university hospitals, each in a different European country. These countries, Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria, differ in terms of...

Introduction The quantity and quality of education in the field of human sexuality vary greatly in medical education programs in the United States and Europe. Aim The current state of medical school education with regard to human sexuality was assessed at an Austrian medical university. Methods Self-constructed questionnaires and the Beliefs Abou...

Recommendations suggest that more sexuality education be implemented in medical school curricula to increase students’ comfort with regard to dealing with sexual health issues. For male medical students the adherence to masculine gender-role norms may also contribute to discomfort regarding dealing with this intimate topic. The current study analyz...

Restless legs syndrome is a common neurological disorder with a clear female predominance. This study aims to evaluate gender differences in clinical, laboratory and polysomnographic features in patients with restless legs syndrome. For this retrospective analysis, 42 women and 42 men from the Innsbruck RLS database matched by age and therapy were...

We assessed medical students’ opinion of affirmative action programs (AAPs), perception of gender equality and discrimination. 276 medical students (56.2% female) participated. Women considered AAPs to be more important than did men. Most women (62.6%) and men (71.9%) received equal treatment, but significantly more women (22.6%) than men (11.6%) e...

The Gender Role Conflict Scale – Short Form (GRCS-SF) assesses a person’s masculine gender role conflict. Masculine gender role conflict results when a person experiences discomfort showing a certain behavior because it is in conflict with masculine norms. The aim of the study was to test the questionnaire’s psychometric properties in an Austrian s...

Masculine norms are in part defined by sexual functioning. However, adherence to masculine norms may at the same time hinder men’s willingness to obtain help when problems involving sexual functioning arise. The current study analyzed the association between gender role conflict and the prevalence of self-reported sexual dysfunction or men’s expect...

The work at hand examines the current status of the implementation of Gender Medicine in medical education at all Austrian universities. To date no systematic studies have been conducted on this subject. This study covers public as well as private universities. The methodology was to first conduct a document analysis, followed by a questionnaire s...

In this study we explored whether attendance at lectures on Gender Medicine, students’ gender or university affiliation influenced students’ gender awareness in medicine. We recruited 483 students (352 women/131 men) of medicine, allied health profession with focus on patient contact and allied health profession students with focus on laboratory wo...

Background Mistreatment of medical students during medical education is a widespread concern. Studies have shown that medical students report the most mistreatment compared to students of other study programs and that the prevalence of mistreatment peaks during clinical training. For this reason, a study was conducted to assess prevalence of mistre...

Women's Health is closely tied to sexuality. In the European context the European Women's Rights Movement fought for women's sexual rights and the right of women to self-determination over a woman's own body. However, there appears to still be an ongoing struggle to have such rights (e.g. abortion) reflected in legislation. In response to the artic...

Guidelines for Scientific Work: The standard for international research requires a portrayal of the differences and non-differences between women and men and illustration of the resulting consequences for medical research. For this reason, the guideline makes available methodological know-how on integrating gender medicine perspectives for elaborat...

The focus of this chapter is on the support and the challenges experienced by female physicians in the formerly male-dominated medical profession. This study was part of a project investigating physicians at university hospitals in seven European countries: 111 physicians (44 women, 67 men) from Austria participated in the study. It examined how wo...

The predicted doctors’ shortage in Austria and the increasing feminisation of the medical profession are aspects of a passionate debate on gender inequality in medical careers and particularly on sufficient medical care in Austria. Therefore, this review summarises main findings on gender inequality in medical careers in Austria using an intersecti...

Over the last few decades the number of female students enrolling to study medicine has been constantly rising (e.g. Hamel et al. 2006: 310; Buckley et al. 2000: 283; Crompton/Le Feuvre 2003: 38-43; Nonnemaker 2000: 400-401). However, barriers for women in medicine still exist and are reflected by the smaller numbers of women in higher positions (H...

Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen sind die Haupttodesursache für Frauen und Männer weltweit, und dies betrifft, insbesondere was die koronaren Herzerkrankungen angeht, eine steigende Anzahl von älteren und alten Menschen. Die Gendermedizinforschung zeigt seit Jahrzehnten in der Kardiologie Geschlechtsunterschiede zuungunsten von Frauen auf, wie längere W...

Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death in women and men worldwide, and, especially as far as coronary heart disorders are concerned, this is true of an increasing number of older and elderly persons. For decades, Gender Medicine research has shown gender differences in cardiology to the detriment of women, for example it takes longer f...

Gender medicine, which takes a differentiated look at human beings as individuals and aims to provide targeted, gender-specific medical care, is slowly gaining recognition and acceptance. Nevertheless, this medical science that cuts across all medical disciplines has been only marginally incorporated into medical education curricula. The authors wi...

In this article, different aspects of gender (used here both in the sense of sex, reflecting somatic differences between men and women, and gender, reflecting psychosocial differences) are reviewed. In preclinical research, are there gender aspects taken into consideration, e.g. in cell culture assays or animal models? What about gender aspects in...

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the physical and mental health status of female workers from five different occupational groups and to identify possible sociodemographic and gender-coded family-related factors as well as work characteristics influencing women's health. The identified predictors of health status were subjected to a gend...

The Women's Health Office of the State of Tyrol, Austria, provides cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention programs for women. However, local Turkish women have not participated in our programs. The aim of the so-called Mosque Campaign was to conduct a Turkish-language, culture-sensitive CVD prevention program tailored to the needs of Turkish women...

Women first enrolled to study medicine at the University of Innsbruck in 1900; in 2000 female enrolment surpassed male. What is the career situation for female doctors? A survey at the Innsbruck University clinics in 2002 used standardized anonymous questionnaires. Of the female doctors, 271(77.0%) participated in the Survey: 176(65.0%) in training...

Frequent reports of gender differences in cardiology prompted us to study the cardiological situation in Tyrol, Austria, from 1995 to 2000. Mortality statistics for heart deaths 1995: women 1008 (53.5%), men 875 (46.5%); 2000: women 1104 (58.2%), men 792 (41.8%). Coronary heart deaths 1995: women 572 (50.0%), men 571 (50.0%); 2000: women 634 (54.4%...

This study examined the effects of a state-run health system on the gender-specific differences in cardiology worldwide, taking coronary angiography as an example. In a prospective study, 476 angiographed patients (155 female, 321 male) were enrolled in consecutive order over a study period of 9 months and asked to answer a standardized questionnai...

Drug therapy is the standard therapy for heart failure. The current state of the art does not permit pacemaker therapy as a general recommendation for left ventricular failure. Numerous controversial reports have been published on the success of pacemaker therapies for congestive heart failure. Iskandrian reported on tachycardiac atrial stimulation...

The long-term efficacy of physiologic dual-chamber (DDD) pacing in the treatment of end-stage idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy was evaluated in a longitudinal study of up to 5 years in 17 patients. The considerable clinical improvement achieved after implantation of a pacemaker programmed for DDD pacing at an atrioventricular delay of 100 ms was m...