An All-Women Class of Surgical Residents

Women have made tremendous progress in medical education. In the middle of the twentieth century, women were about 10 percent of all graduates of U.S. medical schools. Progress toward gender equality was slow. By 1990, men still made up two thirds of all medical school graduates. But over the past 20 years women have made tremendous strides. Today, the gender gap has almost been eliminated. In 2009, 7,823 women earned medical degrees compared to 8,164 men.

But women have made less progress in surgical training. Only 19 percent of the nation’s 160,000 surgeons are women. But here too, progress is being made. Today about 40 percent of the students entering general surgery residency programs are women.

At the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York the entire entering class of seven surgery residents during the 2010-11 academic year were women. This was the first time in the school’s history where all entering surgical residents were women.