Are there too many female medical graduates? Yes

Too many female graduates are bad for medicine, just as too many male ones have been in the past. The numbers of men and women entering medical school should roughly reflect the numbers in society. The case for this is simply on grounds of equal opportunity. But there are also strong economic and workforce planning reasons. I will argue this largely from the perspective of my own specialty, general practice, which illustrates most strongly the impact of the feminisation of medicine.

Over the past 30 years the proportion of women attending medical schools has steadily risen in many countries including the UK, US, Canada, and Australia.1 2 In 2002-3, all UK medical schools had more female students than male, with the percentage of women exceeding 65% in some.3 This partly reflects the increasing number of women applying for medical courses …