Opportunities for Women

A summary of the history of medical education in the United States reveals the surprising observation that, in terms of acceptance of women into medical school, there is no consistent pattern.

Acceptances of women fluctuated widely until 1970 when a sustained increase ensued. That the road to women gaining admission into medical school has been long and hard may not always be evident. For example, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine accepted women with its first medical school class in 1893 and had more women than men in their entering class. It should be noted, however, that this situation is not as straightforward as it seems. The initial establishment of this school involved a substantial endowment from a group of Baltimore-area women who made their contribution dependent upon the acceptance of women into the school. However, for the most part, during the nineteenth century women primarily participated in health care professions as nurses.

The first American woman medical graduate was Elizabeth Blackwell, who received her degree from (the now defunct) Geneva Medical College in New York in 1849. Prior to that, Harriet Hunt began to practice medicine in 1835 after gaining professional training by serving as an apprentice to a Boston physician. She had been repeatedly denied admission into all of the exclusively male medical schools.

Blackwell's acceptance was followed by a handful of other women. Those women who succeeded in getting into medical school seldom received clinical experience, as hospitals did not want women treating their patients. On the other hand, homeopathic and other nontraditional schools were more liberal regarding admission of women.

The educational opportunities for women improved somewhat when Philadelphia's Quakers established a school in 1850 exclusively for women, Medical College of Pennsylvania (which became coeducational in 1969). This event probably motivated some eminent and enlightened male physicians in New York, Boston, and Chicago to contribute money and use their influence to establish all-women institutions in those three cities.

Unable to gain admission to U.S. schools, starting in the 1880s, women in large numbers went to such European cities as Paris and Zurich to secure a first-rate medical education. However, the struggle was far from over after they completed their medical studies because hospitals would not hire them. Therefore, Elizabeth Blackwell and her sister opened a 24-bed infirmary. (She also opened a medical school, as she was dissatisfied with the caliber of some of the graduates of women's colleges who were working for her.) Some women doctors went west, where they were welcomed because of the rough lifestyle in which circumstances often required prompt treatment of many trauma cases.

After the turn of the century, financial problems as well as the 1910 Flexner report resulted in the closing of some of the all-women medical schools and the merger of others. By 1919 only the original Philadelphia Medical School for Women remained.

When Johns Hopkins introduced coeducational medical training in 1893, other medical schools were encouraged to do the same. However, the door to the admission of women opened only a crack and unofficial quotas existed that kept the numbers of women down to an insignificant amount.

The reduction of male manpower during World War I resulted in a small increase in the number of women accepted into American schools (from 5 to 6%, as compared with 4.4% in 1900).

The longstanding problem for women to secure hospital experience remained. Thus, by the 1920s more than 90% of U.S. hospitals did not accept women and women did not attend institutions run by men.

World War II temporarily lowered the barriers to women gaining admission, since the number of qualified male applicants was limited. After the war, the numbers were once again made smaller so that women were making up only 5 to 8% of entering classes.

Since 1970 there has been a dramatic increase in the enrollment of women due to court decisions and the intense impact of the feminist movement, which swept aside the unofficial quota system.