THerapy for Oregon Women in Male-Dominated Fields
Specialized online Therapy For Oregon women Working in STEM, law, Finance, academia, Leadership and Management, and any Other male-dominated Work place
For the woman who Has been the only one in her department for years
If you’re a woman in a male-dominated field somewhere in Oregon outside of Portland, the dynamics you’ve been navigating come with the territory of being in a small community: switching jobs would mean leaving town, pushing back at work means being gossiped about at your kid’s soccer practice, and there might not be another woman in your specialty within 90 miles.
You know what it costs to hold your position when everyone you work with also lives in your neighborhood:
You’re a pulmonologist in Bend, and there are just three of you in town. The chief who’s been at the hospital since before you finished your fellowship has been calling you “kiddo” in front of the residents for eleven years. You’ve thought about saying something every year. You haven’t, because Bend is small enough that he golfs with your kid’s pediatrician, and you’d rather keep practicing the medicine you love than become the woman who “made it about gender.”
You’re a senior partner at a Salem law firm you joined twelve years ago, and the male partner you came in with — the one who’s two years your junior in tenure — was just elected managing partner without your name being seriously considered. The firm has fourteen attorneys total. There is no other firm in Salem at your level in your specialty.
You’re a tenured professor at the University of Oregon, and you’ve been the only woman in your subfield in your department for over a decade. The two male hires from the last few years have both been promoted ahead of you. Eugene is small enough that those colleagues are also your neighbors, your kids’ parents’ neighbors, and the people you see at the Saturday market. There has been no female peer in the building to compare notes with, ever.
None of those moments would make a story you could tell at a dinner party without sounding like you were keeping a list of complaints. The complication that women in Portland and Seattle don’t have to manage is that, in a town the size of Bend or Salem or Eugene, the complaints aren’t private. Your sister-in-law’s best friend works in HR at your hospital. Your kid’s principal sits on the board with your firm’s managing partner. Your department chair’s wife runs the pottery studio you go to on Wednesdays. There is no version of pushing back on the status quo that doesn’t impact other relationships.
You went back and forth in your head about each of those moments, but your body didn’t deliberate. Your body kept its own tally, and that tally has started showing up as the jaw pain that’s been there for the last two years, the 3am wakeups where you’re already drafting the email you’re going to have to send tomorrow, the way you’ve started planning your route to the coffee shop to avoid bumping into the colleague you can’t quite look at right now.
When You Work in a smaller Oregon Community
Escaping the dynamics that show up in your male-dominated workplace is complicated by the fact that you can’t easily switch jobs.
The next location in your specialty is in Portland, or Seattle, or California, or further. Switching means leaving the school your kids are in, the house you remodeled, the friendships you and your spouse have built in town.
The “I’ll just go to a competitor that values me” play that works for women in major metros isn’t available to you in the same way.
You can’t escape by switching social circles. In a small town the social circle and the professional circle are the same circle. Your director’s wife is your tennis partner. Your colleague’s son plays youth soccer with yours. The professional issue doesn’t get a clean container, it leaks into Saturday afternoons.
You can’t escape by finding a peer to talk to. The one or two other women in your specialty at your level in your town are people you’ve known for fifteen years and probably can’t fully be honest with, for the same political reasons. The structural isolation that comes with being one of one in a small market is a specific kind of lonely that doesn’t fix itself with a long weekend.
The women who come to me from smaller Oregon markets aren’t dealing with a milder version of the problem. They’re dealing with a version where every move has more consequences, where everyone knows everyone, and where their body’s response has been compounding for years without an outlet.
For the broader picture of the work and the methodology I use, see my main page on therapy for women in male-dominated fields.
How therapy can change your experience in your workplace and Community
At 6:30am you wake up because your alarm went off, not because you’ve been staring at the ceiling since 4:15am rehearsing the conversation you have to have with your boss. Your body let you sleep through the night, so you start the day with energy instead of three hours of accumulated dread.
You push back on the chief at the tumor board. There’s a beat of silence, then the agenda moves on. You don’t spend the drive home rewriting the conversation in your head. At 6pm, you’re at the soccer field watching your daughter’s game, not replaying the interaction from the morning. At bedtime your jaw is loose, you’re reading the book on your nightstand, and you don’t lose days of sleep after this conversation like you would have six months ago.
You set a limit with the colleague who keeps adding you to projects you didn’t agree to. The conversation lasts four minutes. You drive home with your shoulders down, you eat dinner without rehearsing what you should have said differently, and you don’t wake up at 4am thinking about it again.
You stop turning down the visibility you actually want, the state bar committee, the visiting lecture at the law school, the board seat at the nonprofit you’ve been wanting to join for two years. You say yes to one of them, and you don’t pay for it with a week of disturbed sleep or a Friday stress headache.
The dynamics in your community aren’t going to change because of this work. What can change is what those dynamics cost you in the hours and days after, so that a hard interaction stops impacting your sleep, family time, and focus.
Working with Me: What You Can Expect
All sessions are online. Secure video means I work with women across Oregon — from Hood River, Bend, Klamath Falls, Medford, Ashland, Eugene, Corvallis, Salem, Albany, and beyond — without you having to drive to Portland or Eugene for therapy. Most of my clients meet with me from their home office or their car.
We start weekly. When your body has been locked into this kind of guarding for years, it needs consistent work to learn something different. Weekly sessions give us enough momentum to build on each session before the old responses have time to fully reassert themselves.
Sessions are $250. I don’t bill insurance directly, but I provide Superbills you can submit to your insurance for potential out-of-network reimbursement. Many PPO plans reimburse 50-80% of session costs.
Serving all of Oregon
I work with women in male-dominated industries throughout Oregon, including the OHSU regional clinics, the OSU community in Corvallis, the Oregon faculty and research community in Eugene, the legal and government community in Salem, the medical and tech community in Bend and Redmond, and women in law, healthcare, and engineering in Medford, Ashland, Klamath Falls, Roseburg, Albany, Hood River, La Grande, and Pendleton. I also work with women in Portland’s Silicon Forest and tech corridor.
All sessions are online by secure video, so wherever you are in Oregon, you can meet with me from home.
Jeniffer Duncan, LPC, LMHC, LAT, ATR
I use art therapy and somatic therapy because my clients have already spent years analyzing their situation, and they can describe exactly what’s wrong and exactly why. What they need is someone who works at the body level, where long-term healing happens, and that’s what these modalities do.
I’ve been a therapist for 18 years. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor in Oregon (LPC #C3022) and a Licensed and Registered Art Therapist.
Get started Today.
If you’re ready to start, you can book your first session directly using the scheduling link below. It will take you to my calendar, where you can request a session. I will then email you your new client forms that you’ll digitally sign, and then we’ll meet on your scheduled day.
If you have questions before scheduling, please fill out the form on the contact page and I’ll be in touch within 1-2 business days.
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This work is for women who’ve spent significant time as one of the only women in their department, their leadership team, or their industry, and who are starting to notice that the experience has left marks that don't go away with a long weekend or a promotion.
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Most of my clients work in technology, aerospace, software engineering, finance, academia, healthcare leadership, law, construction, architecture, biotech, or other STEM fields.
I also work with women in operations, logistics, manufacturing, law enforcement, and executive leadership roles across industries where women are still a minority at the decision-making level.
What these fields have in common is that the women in them have spent years navigating environments where being competent was never enough on its own, where they also had to manage how they were perceived, calibrate their tone, and absorb things their male colleagues never had to think about.
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The first session is about getting to know each other. I want to understand what your body is doing, what situations set it off, and how long this has been happening. It is a chance for the both of us to decide if this is a good fit for a working relationship.
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Sessions are online, so you can do them from your home office, your car, or wherever you have privacy and 55 minutes.
I work with women online across Oregon and Washington State.
We start with weekly sessions, then taper to biweekly after about two to three months as the changes start holding on their own.
Sessions are $250. I don't bill insurance directly, but I provide Superbills you can submit for potential out-of-network reimbursement.