Medicine: 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...

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