Smile! Women Have Made Great Strides in Dental Education

In 1969, only 34 women graduated from schools of dental medicine in the United States. They made up a mere 0.9 percent of all dental school graduates. By 1975 the number of women graduating from dental school had more than quadrupled. But women still made up only 3 percent of all dental school graduates.

Over the next decade the number of women graduates of dental school grew dramatically from 146 in 1975 to 1,106 in 1985. Yet women were still just one out of every five graduates. As late as 1999, women were only 35 percent of dental school graduates. Since that time, the progress of women has continued. In 2009, there were 2,281 women and 2,637 men who graduated from U.S. dental schools. Thus, women made up 46.4 percent of all dental school graduates.