Women in medicine

Historically and in many parts of the world, women's participation in the profession of medicine (as physicians, for instance) has been significantly restricted, although women's practice of medicine, informally, in the role of caregivers, or in the allied health professions, has been widespread. Most countries of the world now guarantee equal access by women to medical education, although not all ensure equal employment opportunities and gender parity has yet to be achieved within the medical specialties and around the world.

History of women in medicine

Women's participation in the medical professions was limited by law and practice during the decades while medicine was professionalizing. However, women continued to practice medicine in the allied health fields (nursing, midwifery, etc.), and throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women made significant gains to access to medical education and medical work through much of the world. These gains were sometimes tempered by setbacks; for instance, Mary Roth Walsh documented a decline in women physicians in the US in the first half of the twentieth century, such that there were fewer women physicians in 1950 than there were in 1900. However, through the latter half of the twentieth century, women had gains generally across the board. In 1969, women were 9% of total US medical school enrollment; this had increased to 20% in 1976. By 1985, women comprised 14% of practicing US physicians.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century in industrialized nations, women have made significant gains, but have yet to achieve parity throughout the medical profession. For instance, women have achieved near parity in medical school in some industrialized countries. For instance, women made up greater than 50% of the student body in the United States,. However, rough parity in medical school is a recent development, and so practicing professionals remain disproportionately male overall. Moreover, there are skews within the medical profession: some medical specialties, such as surgery, are significantly male-dominated, while other specialties have achieved gender parity. Biomedical research and academic medical professions -- i.e., faculty at medical schools -- are also disproportionately male. Research on this issue, called the "leaky pipeline" by the National Institutes of Health and other researchers, shows that while women have achieved parity with men in entering graduate school, a variety of discrimination causes them to drop out at each stage in the academic pipeline: graduate school, postdoc, faculty positions, achieving tenure; and, ultimately, in receiving recognition for groundbreaking work. (See women in science for a broader discussion.)

Schools of medicine for women

When women were routinely forbidden from medical school, they sought to form their own medical schools.

• Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women (founded 1886 by Sophia Jex-Blake)
• London School of Medicine for Women
• Tokyo Women's Medical University (founded 1900 by Yoshioka Yayoi)

Hospitals with significant female involvement

• New Hospital for Women (founded by Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and run largely by women, for women)

Pioneering women in medicine

• James Miranda Barry, -1865, a renowned doctor who passed as a man to gain a medical education and practice medicine
• Elizabeth Blackwell, 1821-1910 (first woman to graduate from medical school in the US; MD 1849, Geneva College, New York)
• Edith Pechey-Phipson (1845-1908) (pioneering woman doctor in the United States; MD 1877, University of Bern and Trinity College Dublin)
• Yoshioka Yayoi, 1871-1959 (one of the first women to gain a medical degree in Japan; founded a medical school for women in 1900)
• Muthulakshmi Reddi, 1886-1968 (first woman doctor in India; major social reformer; founder of a significant medical institution; MD 1912, Madras Medical College)
• Virginia Apgar, 1909-1974 (significant work in anesthesiology and teratology; founded field of neonatology; first woman granted full professorship at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons)

References

• Benton JF, "Trotula, women's problems, and the professionalization of medicine in the Middle Ages", Bulletin of Historical Medicine v. 59, n.1, pp.30-53 (Spring 1985).
• Catriona Blake, The Charge of the Parasols: Women's Entry to the Medical Profession
• Charlotte G. Borst, Catching Babies: Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920 (1995), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
• Elisabeth Brooke, Women Healers: Portraits of Herbalists, Physicians, and Midwives (biographical encyclopedia)
• Melodie Chenevert, STAT: Special Techniques in Assertiveness Training for Women in the Health Profession
• Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers
• Deirdre English and Barbara Ehrenreich, For Her Own Good (gendering of history of midwifery and professionalization of medicine)
• Julie Fette, "Pride and Prejudice in the Professions: Women Doctors and Lawyers in Third Republic France," Journal of Women's History, v.19, no.3, pp. 60-86 (2007). (examining women professionals in France, 1870-1940)
• Metta Lou Henderson , American Women Pharmacists: Contributions to the Profession
• Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (1985 first ed.; 2001)
• Ellen S. More, Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850-1995
• Bobette Perrone, H. Henrietta Stockel, and Victoria Krueger, "Medicine Women, Curanderas, and Women Doctors" (1993) (cross-cultural survey of female practice of medicine)
• Rosemary Pringle, Sex and Medicine: Gender, Power and Authority in the Medical Profession
• Patricia M. Schwirian, Professionalization of Nursing: Current Issues and Trends (1998), Philadelphia: Lippencott, ISBN 0781710456
• Mary Roth Walsh, "Doctors Wanted: No Women Need Apply: Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835-1975" (1977)
• Rose Young, "Chances Denied Women Doctors; Noted Suffragist Says That Men Thwart Their Efforts", New York Times Magazine, Aug. 1, 1915. [1]

Significant biographies

• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (1991)

Further research

• "Changing the Face of Medicine", 2003 Exhibition at the National Library of Medicine; exhibition website at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine .

See also

• Women in the workforce
• History of medicine