Peter Moore: Are sexist attitudes in medicine finally fading?

I was about to sit my A levels hoping to get into medical school at the same time as my cousin, Sally.

Our grandmother was happy and supported both of us but said to me, “It’s such a pity that Sally has to do boys’ subjects. She’d make a lovely doctor without having to study boys’ subjects like physics and chemistry." I did not want to tell her that Sally was much brighter than me and was going to get far better grades in “boy’s subjects” than I was.

In the late 1960s there was prejudice against women doctors. I eventually got into a very old-fashioned London medical school. In my year of about one hundred and twenty, there were 12 women. But things were changing. When I qualified in 1975, the new intake was 50:50. The problem for my medical school was that the most important aspect of college life was rugby. Every year was the Hospital’s Cup, and winning was vital. In the 1970s women did not play rugby, so how could they help?

Women are now in the majority, making up 50.04 per cent of registered doctors, 164,440 in total. My only surprise is that it has taken fifty years from the day when my misogynistic medical school had an intake of 50:50.

When people complain about the sexist attitudes from the 1970s, we were positively progressive compared with the 1870s.

Looking through the archives, I found a paper in the British Medical Journal from 28 May 1870. A British doctor had been to France and discovered a terrible thing that was happening. They were training young women to be doctors, something that was clearly inappropriate. There were several arguments against this shocking movement.

First of all, are women doctors required? “Is it not rather a certainty that men are physically better adapted than women for medical practice and that men-doctors will in ninety-nine cases in a hundred successfully compete with women-doctors?”

He went on to write about the shocking scenes he had witnessed personally.

“I have seen a young woman with unblushing front, taking notes along with young men, of a lecture on the clitoris and hymen, illustrated by curious anecdotes and preparations. These disgusting spectacles made a strong impression upon my mind.”

He also argued that “it will destroy reverence and respect for female modesty.

“The majority of right-thinking persons will feel that a community of young men and young women in medical studies must mutually deteriorate both. Can anyone be more pitilessly unsexed than the young woman who has been taught the science and art of medicine with young men? The conjoined teaching of both sexes must either be a sham, or the female students must be ruthlessly unsexed.”

On the positive side, he did accept that “if women are to have a fair chance of being equal to men as physicians and surgeons, they must learn their profession along in the same way as men.”

There was another positive. “Might be well for the young men to form friendships with female fellow students of repute rather than with the disreputable damsels of the balls and drinking saloons.” So at least the male medical students would find a more reputable wife.

Finally he argued, “Is it not cruel, therefore, to women and injurious to men to allure women to barter modesty for medicine?”

Only six years later, in 1876, a new medical act allowed the medical profession in Britain to license all qualified people, whatever their gender.

Today 60 per cent of medical students are female, and so the current percentage of 50.04 per cent female will only increase.

When the profession is overwhelmingly female, will medical practice change? General practice has already become more family friendly. Out-of-hours work is now voluntary. The NHS will have to adapt. Many female doctors work part-time, which should not be a problem, except that we will need more doctors.

Unlike my colleague in 1870, I believe women doctors are required, and I have never seen any of them blushing during a lecture of gynaecology.