Steinem helped change medicine by empowering women physicians

When one entered medical school in the 1960s, medicine was overwhelmingly a man’s profession. Women were present, but they were a small minority in the classroom, the hospital, and the faculty offices. The culture of medicine reflected the culture of society: men were expected to be doctors, surgeons, professors, and hospital leaders, while women were often expected to be nurses, teachers, wives, or mothers. In an anatomy lecture, a professor used slides of nude women not as a serious part of medical education but in a demeaning and supposedly humorous way to capture the attention of a nearly all-male class. Few questioned it at the time; that was simply the culture in which they were being trained.

How the Medical Profession Changed

When one entered medical school in the 1960s, women were a small minority in medicine. Today, because of the pioneering work of Gloria Steinem and other women activists, the U.S. had 1,032,365 active physicians in 2024; 38.7% were women, or nearly 400,000 female physicians. The Association of American Medical Colleges attributes this dramatic transformation to a combination of legal, social, and political forces, including the women’s movement and the emergence of leaders such as Steinem, Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Mary Putnam Jacobi. These four women advocated that “Women belong in medicine, women are intellectually capable of practicing medicine on equal terms with men, and women should have the same opportunities, choices, and power as men throughout society.”

Steinem challenged a fundamental assumption: that a woman’s opportunities should not be determined by her gender. That message mattered enormously to women considering careers in medicine. She was not a physician, medical educator, or health care administrator, but her contribution to medicine was more fundamental: she helped change the way American society thought about women, and that change inevitably reached the medical profession.

A Movement for Reproductive Autonomy

Steinem understood something that medicine sometimes failed to recognize: health care is not simply about treating disease. It is also about autonomy, dignity, and the ability to make decisions about one’s own body. The women’s health movement of the 1960s and 1970s emerged around these concerns. Feminist activists challenged a health care system in which male physicians and institutions often made decisions about women’s reproductive lives.

During early years in practice, a married woman needed her husband’s signature or permission to have a hysterectomy, while a married man could have a vasectomy without his wife’s consent. These activists advocated for birth control, abortion access, better maternity care, patient education, and greater control by women over their own health care decisions. Historians of the women’s health movement describe these changes as a fundamental shift toward women’s sexual and reproductive autonomy. Steinem helped give that movement a national voice.

It is easy to look at the statistics and see only numbers, but the reality for women in medicine has shifted in ways that extend beyond enrollment sheets. The presence of women in operating rooms and boardrooms has altered the daily experience of care, changing not just who is treating patients, but how decisions are made about treatment plans and hospital policies. This shift requires a rethinking of institutional habits that have existed for generations, forcing medical institutions to confront practices that were once considered standard but now appear exclusionary.

Medicine followed society

Medical schools began confronting discriminatory admission practices. Title IX, enacted in 1972, prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. The Association of American Medical Colleges notes that the 1970s saw a striking increase in women entering medicine, driven by legal, social, and political forces. Yale established what became the first Office for Women in Medicine in 1975, and the AAMC launched its Women in Medicine program in 1976.

Women Now Dominate Medical Schools

Women now constitute more than half of U.S. medical students. In 2023-24, women represented 54.6% of medical students. In many specialties, the transformation is even more dramatic. By 2022, women represented 62% of physicians in obstetrics and gynecology, 66% in pediatrics, and 53% in dermatology. The source notes that imagining the medical school self of the 1960s being told women would constitute most medical students would likely result in disbelief, as if describing a different country.

A different medical profession

Gloria Steinem did not change medicine by writing prescriptions, performing surgery, or teaching anatomy. She changed something more fundamental. She helped change the expectations of society and, consequently, the expectations women had for themselves. She helped make it acceptable for a woman to say she wants to be a doctor, she wants to be a surgeon, or she wants to chair a department.

Leadership Gains and Remaining Challenges

Women have made extraordinary gains in medicine, but leadership, compensation, academic advancement, and representation in some specialties continue to present challenges. A 1979 study published in JAMA found that although the number of women physicians was growing, women remained dramatically underrepresented in senior academic positions. The medical profession still has work to do in recognizing unconscious bias, supporting women in leadership, addressing pregnancy and childcare barriers, and ensuring that women’s health receives the research and clinical attention it deserves.