Gender representation in surgery: progress and challenges in recent years

Women have played an important role in medical history for centuries. The first surgical procedure involving a woman occurred over 5000 years ago. Before the 1970s, medical schools had an extremely low female enrollment (6%). Over the past decades, the proportion of female medical students has increased dramatically, with female medical students now outnumbering male medical students in developed countries such as the UK and the USA. Nonetheless, there has been minimal progress in the representation of females in the field of surgery, with less than one-third of surgeons worldwide being female. Several factors influence junior female doctors’ decision to pursue a career in surgery. Some women are put off by the notion that surgery is an “old boys’ network” requiring male strength.