Table 2 Comments and the emerging codes, categories and themes in the content analysis.

"Women and men can never really understand each other." (male, 47, general practitioner)

"This is rather obvious considering that women and men express themselves in altogether different manners." (male, 47, non-surgical specialty)

Men and women behave differently

Differences

Understandings of 'gender'

"Coronary disease in women differs from coronary disease in men with regard to symptoms, seriousness and treatment risks."(female, 38, non- surgical specialty)

"Men and women describe symptoms differently and expect different therapies" (male,42, general practitioner)

Women's and men's diseases are different

"It is an advantage to be a man. You have more authority in contact with staff and with patients."(male, 41, surgical specialty)

"Maybe I listen more to the demands about investigations and treatment from male patients and see women's symptoms as less important, easier to ignore?" (female, 41, general practitioner)

Hierarchies and injustice

Inequity

"It is probably harder to get a picture of the total life situation of the female patient than the male"(female, 46, non- surgical specialty)

"A women's life is partly something else and this affects health and should affect interpretation of symptoms." (male, 51, surgical specialty)

Men and women have unequal life conditions and experiences