Situation Report

MEDICINE is a man's world, and only recently have women received any encouragement to enter it as doctors instead of nurses. Though change is slow, some women are taking advantage of the new opportunities.

A decade ago women accounted for just 6% of the nation's 260,000 doctors; today they are 7.6% of the 345,000 practitioners. Nor are women spread evenly within the profession. They represent only 1% of the general surgeons, who are among the biggest medical earners, and 26% of the nation's public health physicians, whose income is modest by comparison with most doctors.

The proportion of women in some of the other specialties: pediatrics, 20%; anesthesiology, 13.8%; psychiatry, 12.9%; obstetrics-gynecology, 6.8%; internal medicine, 5.2%.

In the near future there will be a far larger supply to go around. Despite continued resistance to women at many medical schools and hospitals, the number of female degree candidates is increasing rapidly. Of the nation's 8,300 medical students ten years ago, only 600, or 7%, were women. By 1968 the percentage of women entering medical school had inched up to only 9%. Last fall, however, 13.5% of the nation's incoming medical students were women, and the proportion is likely to increase further in years to come.

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