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Elizabeth Blackwell’s Heirs

Women as Physicians in the United States, 1880-1920

Holly J. McCammon

Vanderbilt University

Sociologists and historians of medicine have documented the under representation of women as physicians in the United States during the critical period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and have speculated on the barriers to women’s greater access to the profession. To date, however, there has been no quantitative analysis of factors that may have hindered or facilitated women’s efforts to become physicians. Using data on 48 U.S. states from 1880 to 1920, this article explores the relative effects on women’s share of physicians of conservative gender culture, male physicians’ opposition to women as colleagues, and nursing as an alternative occupation. These analyses demonstrate that women were less common in states with conservative gender cultures, male physicians’ actions in opposition to women had little impact (net of other factors), and nursing was not an alternative occupation that attracted women who might otherwise have considered medicine as a career.

Key Words: women in medicine • professions • occupations • gender

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