Gloria Steinem and the changing face of medicine

When I 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. Women were often expected to be nurses, teachers, wives, or mothers.

I remember an anatomy lecture in which 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 our nearly all-male class. At the time, few of us questioned it. That was simply the culture in which we were being trained.

Looking back more than six decades later, that episode in the anatomy class seems almost unimaginable. But it is an important reminder of how much medicine, and American society, has changed.

When I 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 percent were women, or nearly 400,000 female physicians.

I trained in a surgical specialty, and there were almost no women in the surgical subspecialties when I was in medical school. In 2004, only 11 percent of general surgeons were women. By 2022, that had increased to 24 percent, doubling in less than two decades. In the 2024-25 surgery residency class, women accounted for 42.6 percent of general surgery residents.

In the 1960s and ’70s the culture began to change. One of the people who helped change it was Gloria Steinem. Steinem was not a physician, medical educator, or health care administrator. 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.

From spectators to participants

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) 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 Gloria 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.”

The change was not caused by Steinem alone. Title IX, affirmative action policies, changing admission practices, and the broader women's movement were enormously important. But Steinem became one of the movement's most visible voices.

She 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.

Reproductive rights became health care rights

Perhaps Steinem's most important connection to health care was her advocacy for reproductive freedom. In 1969, she spoke publicly for the first time at an abortion-rights meeting in New York. She disclosed that she had undergone an abortion at age 22, an experience she had previously kept private because of the negative stigma at that time surrounding abortion. That event became a turning point in her life and activism.

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. I remember during my early years in practice that a married woman needed her husband’s signature or permission to have a hysterectomy. However, 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.

Ms. magazine changed the conversation

In 1972, Steinem and her colleagues launched Ms. magazine. It was revolutionary because it treated women not simply as wives, mothers, homemakers, or consumers, but as people with political, professional, intellectual, and health concerns of their own.

The magazine addressed subjects that mainstream publications avoided, including abortion, sexual harassment, rape, domestic violence, and discrimination.

A young woman reading Ms. could see women demanding careers, leadership, equal pay, reproductive freedom, and a voice in decisions affecting their lives. The message was simple but powerful: Women belong in this profession.

That message eventually reached the medical school classroom, the operating room, the research laboratory, the hospital boardroom, and the dean's office.

Medicine followed society

Medical schools began confronting discriminatory admission practices. Title IX, enacted in 1972, prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. The AAMC 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 constitute more than half of U.S. medical students. In 2023-24, women represented 54.6 percent of medical students.

In many specialties, the transformation is even more dramatic. By 2022, women represented 62 percent of physicians in obstetrics and gynecology, 66 percent in pediatrics, and 53 percent in dermatology.

Imagine telling my medical school self in the 1960s that one day women would constitute most medical students. I would probably have thought you were describing a different country.

The unfinished revolution

Women have made extraordinary gains in medicine, but leadership, compensation, academic advancement, and representation in some specialties continue to present challenges. A 1979 JAMA study, for example, found that although the number of women physicians was growing, women remained dramatically underrepresented in senior academic positions.

And today's 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.

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, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a surgeon, or I want to chair a department.

Bottom Line: Looking back at the medical profession I entered in the 1960s, the transformation is extraordinary. The anatomy slides that once seemed merely a distasteful joke now remind me of how much the culture of medicine, and the culture of America, has changed. Gloria Steinem was one of the people who helped make that change possible.

Neil Baum, MD, a professor of clinical urology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dr. Baum is the author of several books, including the best-selling book Marketing Your Medical Practice: Ethically, Effectively, and Economically, which has sold over 225,000 copies and has been translated into Spanish.