Sunday, December 29, 2019

U.S medical school enrollments by sex: women outnumber men for the first time

There are now more women than men applying to U.S. medical schools, being accepted (to the first year class) and enrolled (in all four years). See the 2019 Fall Applicant, Matriculant, and Enrollment Data Tables from the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC)

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Here's the recent history leading up to this:



In the 1950's, almost all medical school grads were men. As the number of women grew, the medical labor market had to start accomodating married couples both looking for residencies.  This is the first year in which the total enrollment of women exceeds that of men, but of course the last few years have seen that coming in the number of women matriculating: women first-year medical students outnumbered men already in 2017..

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Here's a news story from the Washington Post about these statistics:
The Big Number: Women now outnumber men in medical schools
By Linda Searing Dec. 23, 2019

"In the medical profession overall, male doctors still outnumber female doctors, 64 percent to 36 percent, according to 2019 data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. But that may be changing, according to a report from the health-care company AthenaHealth. Its survey of 18,000 physicians at 3,500 practices on its network found that, in 2017, 80 percent of doctors 65 and older were men, but 60 percent of doctors younger than 35 were women. The disparity between male and female doctors appears to extend to their chosen field of specialization. A joint report this fall from the American Medical Association and AAMC finds that male doctors dominate orthopedic surgery (85 percent), neurological surgery (82 percent) and interventional radiology (81 percent), and female doctors dominate obstetrics and gynecology (83 percent), allergy and immunology (74 percent) and pediatrics (72 percent). Specialties with a nearly equal balance of male and female doctors are sleep medicine, preventive medicine, pathology and psychiatry. Overall, medical schools this year experienced about a 1 percent increase in applicants and in new enrollees, which the AAMC says contributes to an enrollment growth of 33 percent since 2002. Still, it notes, the country faces a projected shortage of 122,000 doctors by 2032."

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