Women in medicine

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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[1] and gender parity has yet to be achieved within the medical specialties and around the world.

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[edit] 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.[2] 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.[3] However, through the latter half of the twentieth century, women had gains generally across the board. In the United States, for instance, women were 9% of total US medical school enrollment in 1969; this had increased to 20% in 1976.[3] By 1985, women comprised 14% of practicing US physicians.[4]

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, and in the United States, women actually made the majority of the medical student body in 2003.[5]

However, the practice of medicine remains disproportionately male overall. In industrialized nations, the recent rough parity in gender of medical students has not yet trickled into parity in practice. In many developing nations, neither medical school nor practice approach gender parity.

Moreover, there are skews within the medical profession: some medical specialties, such as surgery, are significantly male-dominated,[6] 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.[7][8][9][10] (See women in science for a broader discussion.)


[edit] Schools of medicine for women

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

[edit] Hospitals with significant female involvement

[edit] Pioneering women in medicine

[edit] Women's history and women's health movement

Scholars have been examining the history and sociology of medicine for decades. Biographies of pioneering women physicians were common throughout this time, but the study of women in medicine took particular root with the advent of the women's movement in the 1960s, and in conjunction with the women's health movement. Two publications in 1973 were critical in establishing the women's health movement and scholarship about women in medicine: First, the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1973 by the Boston Women's Health Collective,[14] and second, "Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Female Healers", a short paper by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English also in 1973.[2] The Ehrenreich/English paper examined the history of women in medicine as the professionalization of the field excluded women, particularly midwives, from the practice. Ehrenreich and English later expanded the work into a full-length book, For Her Own Good, which connected the exclusion of women from the practice of medicine to sexist medical practices; this text and Our Bodies, Ourselves became key texts in the women's health movement.

The English/Ehrenreich text laid out some early insights about the professionalization of medicine and the exclusion of women from the profession, and numerous scholars have greatly built upon and expanded this work. These scholars include:

  • Diana Elizabeth Long, 1938- PhD 1966 Yale University Department of History of Science and Medicine; 1999-2006 (significant work as Project Scholar, "Literature and Medicine," Maine Humanities Council); pioneering research in medical indexing and gender with national and international acclaim; 1989 first director of University of Southern Maine Women's Studies.

[edit] 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]

[edit] Significant biographies

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ See generally, "Women's Human Rights", 1998, Human Rights Watch (available online).
  2. ^ a b See generally Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (1973).
  3. ^ a b Walsh, 1977.
  4. ^ Morantz-Sanchez, Preface.
  5. ^ "Applicants to U.S. Medical Schools Increase; Women the Majority for the First Time", Association of American Medical Colleges, Nov. 3, 2003, press release ("Women made up the majority of medical school applicants for the first time ever").
  6. ^ Dixie Mills, "Women in Surgery - Past, Present, and Future" (2003 presentation, Association of Women Surgeons; available at AWS website.
  7. ^ The term was coined by S.E. Berryman in "Who Will Do Science?", 1983; see Louise Luckenbill-Edds, "2000 WICB / Career Strategy Columns (Archive)", Nov. 1, 2000, WICB Newsletter, American Society for Cell Biology.
  8. ^ A. N. Pell, "Fixing the Leaky Pipeline: Women Scientists in Academia", Journal of Animal Science, v.74, pp. 2843-2848 (1996), available online at Journal of Animal Science, FASS.org.
  9. ^ Jacob Clark Blickenstaff, "Women and Science Careers: Leaky Pipeline or Gender Filter?", Gender and Education, v.17, n.4, pp. 369-386 (Oct. 2005).
  10. ^ National Academy of Sciences, Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering.
  11. ^ Scotland: Just the Medicine that the Doctor Ordered, Aug. 2005.
  12. ^ Edwards, Muriel, M.D., "Emma K. Willits," Journal of the American Medical Women's Association, 5/1 (January 1950): 42-43.
  13. ^ "Dr. Marie Diana Equi", NLM Changing the Face of Medicine.
  14. ^ Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973).

[edit] Further research

[edit] See also