The Bars Against Women

Women now sit in Congress, occupy the mayor's office of several U.S. communities, deliver the news on television and even work as professional furniture movers. But women remain a rarity in a profession for which they are eminently qualified--medicine. Only 21,000, or 7%, of the country's 300,000 doctors are female. Though the U.S. needs at least 50,000 new doctors to meet current needs, little has been done until recently to attract more women into medicine.

A great deal has been done, however, to discourage distaff doctors. The obstacles that stand in the way of any woman who wants to train in medicine are formidable. Most medical schools are loath to accept women at all, fearing that they will have children and drop out before completing their education. This fear is largely unfounded.

Seventy percent of all would-be women doctors delay marriage until after they have completed medical school; 87% of those who do marry put off having families until they have completed their training, often at age 26.

Different Problems. Prospective women physicians are not seeking to get by with less work than men. What they do want, first, is an end to discrimination in the admission process. Further, they want recognition that the problems of married women, at least, are different from those of men. They seek adoption of programs that would allow them to meet the same educational and training demands as men on more flexible schedules. So far, few schools have been willing to go along.

Though a number of schools will make individual exceptions for maternity leave, most expect women to meet the same requirements as men within the same time period. The result is that they are often forced to choose between family life and a career. Other institutions regard maternity as a misdemeanor and require new mothers to return to class within two to ten days after childbirth. The alternative is to withdraw for a semester or two.

Hospitals, which are responsible for internship and residency programs, are equally unyielding with married women. Most require that they put in the same 70-hour weeks as male trainees; others refuse to allow them to escape weekend work or 36-hour duty stints, which cause extreme separation of mother from child. Nor are most professional associations any less demanding. The American Board of Pediatrics and the Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology have refused to bend their requirements of full-time residency for certification as a specialist.

Because of such attitudes, medicine is a practical career only for women with great determination--and understanding families. Dr. Edith Shapiro, now a psychiatrist at Manhattan's Beth Israel Medical Center, was forced to delay her entrance into medical school by a year when faculty members learned that she was pregnant. She avoided another delay only by concealing her second pregnancy, conveniently giving birth during a summer vacation and stoically returning to classes two weeks later. Dr. Nancy Hendrie, now of Concord, Mass., virtually abandoned her family to the costly care of a cook and a housekeeper in order to complete her residency in pediatrics at the Children's Medical Center in Boston.

Needless Sacrifices. Harvard Medical School's Dr. Leona Baumgartner, former New York City health commissioner, sees such sacrifices as needless. Trained as a pediatrician, she feels that women should be with their families on weekends. Convinced that women can successfully combine the careers of mother and doctor, she believes that more women will be encouraged to take up medicine when schools and hospitals recognize family obligations and needs and make realistic arrangements for coping with them.

Some schools and hospitals have already begun to bend. Boston's Children's Medical Center, yielding to a dozen petitions from Dr. Hendrie, has operated since 1962 a part-time residency in pediatrics, women's favorite specialty. New York Medical College has pioneered a flexible graduate training program for women residents in psychiatry. Instead of being bound to the usual nonstop 36-month residency, physician-mothers at N.Y.M.C. break their training into four nine-month periods. The program, which allows the women to spend evenings, most weekends and holidays with their families, has proved both popular and productive. In seven years, not one of the 48 women enrolled has had to drop out.

Even more changes may be forthcoming. The Women's Equity Action League, a national organization composed of both men and women, last fall filed sex-discrimination charges with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare against all U.S. medical schools. HEW has already taken action on some earlier, similar complaints by freezing contract funds to a dozen universities, and asking them to submit plans for easing the admission of women. Given the increasingly tight economic situation, the medical schools seem likely to make tomorrow more of a ladies' day in medicine.

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