Women now comprise the clear majority of students enrolled in the nation’s post-graduate health care education programs, including those in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing and veterinary science.
In nursing programs, women have always constituted the majority of students, but in fields like dentistry, they have become the majority only relatively recently. Here is a summary of the gender breakdown for students enrolled in each of five health care professional training programs.
Medical School
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, of the 97,903 students enrolled in MD-granting medical schools in the 2023-24 academic year, 53,422 were women, representing 54.6% of the total.
Medical specialities continue to show substantial gender differences, some of which are large. According to data from 2022-2023, women make up a larger percentage of residents in:
- Obstetrics and gynecology (87.2%).
- Pediatrics/psychiatry/child and adolescent psychiatry (combined) (75.5%).
- Pediatrics (73.6%).
- Allergy and immunology (65.8%).
- Public health and general preventive medicine (65.2%).
- Dermatology (61.7%).
By contrast, men accounted for the vast majority of physicians in these medical residencies:
- Orthopedic surgery (79.6%).
- Interventional radiology (integrated) (77.5%).
- Neurological surgery (76.2%).
- Radiology-diagnostic (71.8%).
- Urology (67.7%).
Dental School
In the 2023-24 academic year, women comprised 56.4% of first-year enrollment in the nation’s 72 dental schools, continuing the trend of women comprising the majority of entering dental students that began in the 2019-2020 academic year. Women now make up 56.7% of the more than 26,500 enrolled dental students.
Pharmacy School
According to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, of the total number of students enrolled in first professional pharmacy degree programs for fall 2023, 67.8% were women. In 2022–23, of the 12,639 first professional degrees awarded in pharmacy, 66.4% were to women.
Nursing Program
There are several levels of nursing training programs, progressing from certificates to the Ph.D. If we consider just the Bachelor or Science in Nursing (BSN), Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP), women comprise the overwhelming majority of enrollees, despite the fact that special recruiting efforts have increased the representation of men in the profession recently.
According to a 2023 American Association of Colleges of Nursing survey, men make up only 13% of BSN enrollment, 12% of MSN students and 15.4% of DNP enrollments.
Veterinary Medicine Schools
The American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges reports that 84% of the veterinary medical class of 2027 are women. That continues the trend of veterinary medicine becoming a predominantly female health profession ever since 2009. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023, almost 70% of veterinarians were women.
With health care jobs projected to be among the fastest growing employment sector over the next decade, the market for students currently enrolled in health care education programs looks bright. Women are well-positioned to reap the benefits of this robust growth and to become represented in health care leadership positions at levels that better represent their overall presence as practitioners.