More Women Entering Medical School Than Men for 6th Straight Year: Why?

When she was an undergraduate, internist Theresa Rohr-Kirchgraber, MD, remembers having second thoughts about going into nursing as originally planned. She spoke with a college counselor about her desire to go to medical school instead.

At the time, it was the 1980s, and women made up about 30% of medical school students, Rohr-Kirchgraber said. When she mentioned medical school, the counselor sat her down and told her point-blank, “Well, if you become a physician, you won’t be able to be a mother then!”

“There was this expectation that you couldn’t do it all or if you would have to choose,” Rohr-Kirchgraber said. “I think that probably dissuaded a lot of women from going to medical school.”

Forty years later, the landscape for women in medical school — and the stereotypes associated — have vastly changed, said Rohr-Kirchgraber, a professor of medicine at Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership in Athens, Georgia, and a married, mother of three. Women now outnumber men in medical school, a trend that continues to rise.

In the 2024-2025 academic year, for the sixth time in a row, women made up the majority of medical school applicants, matriculants, and total enrollment, according to new data released on January 9 from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

In the 2024-25 academic year, women made up 57% of applicants, 55% of matriculants, and 5% of total enrollment, the AAMC found. Women matriculants rose 0.2%. Among men, there was a 1% increase in the number of matriculants in 2024-25. It was the third year in a row that male matriculants did not decline following 6 years of declines from 2016 to 2022, according to the AAMC report.

The number of women in medical schools this year is steady with that of the 2023-2024 academic year, when women made up 57% of medical school applicants, 55% of matriculants, and 54% of total enrollment, according to last year’s data.

Women have been entering medical school at higher rates since 2017, said Diana Lautenberger, AAMC director of gender equity initiatives.

“It’s not that women are only now interested in higher education, medicine, science, STEM fields,” Lautenberger said. “Women have always been interested in these fields. They have just not been socially accepted or allowed to go into them in such higher numbers.”

More social support, more women physician role models, and medical schools becoming less biased, have all fueled more women acting on their interests to pursue medicine, she said.

A broader AAMC analysis found that from 2004 to 2022, the number of women in the active physician workforce increased 97%, whereas the number of men increased 13%. Women accounted for 38% of active physicians in 2022 (a total of 371,851), a rise from 26% (188,926) in 2004, according to the report. Men meanwhile, accounted for 62% of active physicians in 2022 (613,974), a decrease from 74% (541,285) in 2004.

A particularly big jump of women entering medical school came after the pandemic. In 2021, about 6000 more women applied to medical school, according to Lautenberger. Men applicants increased too, but by about 2000.

“There’s a phrase called the ‘feminization of medicine’ in that we are seeing more women coming into it,” she said. “The result is almost this return of viewing medicine as this profession of healing and caring. This idea that physicians are not just in surgery in the operating room performing operations on patients, but that medicine really is about holistic care.”

More Women Undergraduates Tipping the Scales 

Another factor contributing to more women entering medical school is that more women are now getting undergraduate degrees, leading to a larger pool of women graduates, said Rohr-Kirchgraber, who is a past president of the American Medical Women’s Association.

In 1995, men and women were equally likely to hold a bachelor’s degree, but the gap has widened since then, according to Pew Research Center. Today, 47% of US women aged 25-34 years have a bachelor’s degree compared with 37% of men, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center analysis.

Shifting cultural norms have also impacted the rise of women in medical schools, said Michelle (Shelley) Nuss, MD, campus dean for the Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership and associate dean for graduate medical education. Cultural norms once emphasized women staying at home and taking care of children and men working, she said. Today, there is more acceptance of women in the workforce and parents sharing childcare duties.

Women physician role models and senior women leaders have also played a role, Rohr-Kirchgraber said. Organizations like the American Medical Women’s Association and their leaders have helped pave the way for young women physicians, she said.

“Women today can see, ‘Oh, you can be a doctor and have a family. You can be a woman and be a neurosurgeon.’ It’s not so surprising as it used to be,” she said.

Multiple studies have shown that women physicians positively impact outcomes and public health. 

Patients seen by women physicians for example, have better patient outcomes and lower readmission rates. A 2024 study in Annals of Internal Medicine found that hospitalized patients in the United States had a lower chance of dying or being readmitted within 30 days when they were treated by female physicians rather than by male clinicians.

The death rate for female patients was 8.15% when treated by female physicians vs 8.38% when treated by male physicians, a clinically meaningful difference, the study found. Male patients treated by female physicians had a 10.15% mortality rate compared with a 10.23% rate for male patients treated by male doctors.

Women physicians also spend more time with patients, Lautenberger said.

“They’re more empathetic. They listen more,” she said. “The impact that we’re seeing is ultimately positive for public health, for society, and for the profession at large. Not to mention about half the entire population are women. Just having that representational workforce becomes really important and ultimately better for public health.”

Remaining Equity Gaps to Close

While higher numbers of women physicians are coming into the workforce, women still represent only 38% of the practicing physician workforce, according to the AAMC.

At the same time, women physicians continue to face inequities in other areas of practice including salary and leadership roles.

Pay equity has been a continuing challenge for women physicians, said Rohr-Kirchgraber said. A recent study of female primary care physicians (PCPs) for example, showed that women PCPs generated 10.9% less revenue from office visits and conducted 10.8% fewer visits than their male counterparts. However, they spent 2.6% more time in visits than their male counterparts.

“When you look at the gender inequity and pay, in every single field of medicine except for anesthesia, women are paid less,” Rohr-Kirchgraber said.

Data also show women physicians are still primarily chosing the same three specialties: Pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, and dermatology.

“When we look at by specialty, in general, we are not diversifying the range of specialties that women are entering,” Lautenberger said. “Those same specialties that had the highest proportions of women and the lowest proportions of women are exactly the same today as they were 10 years ago.”

One area where women are gaining momentum after decades of dearth is academic medicine. Women faculty have now risen from 38% to 45% in the past decade, according to the AAMC’s 2023-2024 report on The State of Women in Academic Medicine.

Women now represent 27% of US medical school deans, 34% of division chiefs, and 45% of senior associate deans. However, the report noted that progress is still needed among department chairs where only 25% are women.

Nuss is optimistic that more women taking on academic leadership roles is on the horizon.

“We’re just now starting to see more women in medicine and working their way up,” she said. “It’s going to take a little longer to get where we need to be, which is more of a balance of leadership at the top in medical schools. I think you will see more associate deans, more department heads and chairs, and more deans over time.”