INTRODUCTION:The vast literature that seeks to understand factors inherent to the medical training that affect the students' mental health, converges in abundance for surveys on depression and anxiety through established quantitative instruments. Even so, factors related to the students' perception of their interpersonal relationships in academic life are little explored as a source of data on manifestations of power, violence, social support, and gender bias in hierarchical relationships, between pairs and within the institution. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate what medical students from the first to the sixth year think about their interpersonal relationships during medical training, under the focus of gender, power, and violence. METHODS: The study was developed in two stages. In the first, thirty women and thirty men, all medical undergraduates from the first to the sixth year at USP's Medical School, were randomly selected and invited to participate in focus groups. Ten students from the first year of 2018 participated in the four proposed meetings, which were recorded and brought significant contributions to the capture of elements relevant to the students' experience and for the preparation of the instrument to be applied to all enrolled undergraduates (second stage). A questionnaire composed of 70 questions was elaborated in Likert format, 5 open questions, 9 multiple choice questions and 1 ranking, which was evaluated by a panel of researchers in the field of anthropology, psychology and medicine. The invitation for students' participation in the second stage was sent by email and it had the access link for the acceptance of the Free and Informed Consent Term, which later allowed access to the questionnaire, both hosted on Google Forms. RESULTS: In the first stage, stereotyped perceptions about gender were evident; hierarchy of the doctor-patient relationship and asymmetry between genders as to the frequency of participation in the discussions of the meetings: men took the floor 63% of the time and women 37%. In the second stage, which counted with the participation of 320 students from the first to the sixth year in 2020, the perception of women and men was different, especially in relation to situations permeated by gender and violence, such as: unlike men, women believe that gender appears as a selective criterion for entering certain medical areas (p <0.0001); intimidation situations among students within the college was significantly more indicated as having been witnessed by women than by men (p = 0.0010); the approval rate on the way the hierarchy is exercised in college is 1.3% for women and 5.5% for men (p = 0.0018). A fraction of 12% of the students demonstrated uncertainty regarding whether there is a difference between the concepts of gender and sexuality and 40% do not know whether transsexuality and transvestite have the same meaning. There was a significant consensus regarding the absence of discussions about gender and sexuality in the classroom and also about the pres...