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1847
Harriet Hunt is the first woman to apply to Harvard Medical School. She is also the first woman rejected. (Point of reference: The first medical school opened over 80 years earlier in 1765 at the University of Pennsylvania. Students enrolled for "anatomical lectures" and a course on "the theory and practice of physick.")
1848
The first women’s rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York. A set of 12 resolutions is adopted calling for the equal treatment of women under the law and for voting rights for women.
1849
Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. She graduates from Geneva Medical College in New York, where her admission had been endorsed by fellow students, who reportedly thought her application was a practical joke.
1850
The Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, the first medical school for women, opens with an enrollment of 40 women. Founded by Quakers, the school faced serious opposition from the male medical establishment, which felt that women were too feeble-minded and delicate for the rigors of clinical practice.
1857
Elizabeth Blackwell and her sister Emily, along with Maria Zakrzewska, MD, establish the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. It is the first hospital operated by women and the first to offer clinical training for women.
1864
Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the first African-American woman to receive an MD
1866
Ann Preston, MD, is appointed the first female dean of the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She is also the first woman dean of any medical school in the U.S.
1869
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Women’s Suffrage Association with the goal of achieving voting rights for women by means of a Congressional amendment to the Constitution.
1870
The University of Michigan becomes the first state medical school to formally admit women.
1876
Sarah Hackett Stevenson, MD, is admitted as the first female member of the American Medical Association, which was founded in 1847.
1893
Co-educational Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is established.
By the end of the 19th century, more than 7000 women physicians were at work in the US (an estimated 10% of total working physicians), up from only 200 in 1860. Despite this, women would remain a minority in medicine throughout most of the 20th century. Though 12% of med school graduates in 1949 were women, by 1965, that percentage had gone back down to 7%.
1903
Florence Sabin, MD, becomes the first female faculty member of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 2005, the school honored her legacy by naming one of its four colleges after her.
1913
The American College of Surgeons was founded in Chicago, IL. Florence West Duckering, an attending surgeon at The New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, was one of the first women surgeons admitted to the college the same year.
1915
The Medical Women’s National Association, now known as the American Medical Women’s Association, is founded by Bertha Van Hoosen, MD.
1916
Margaret Sanger opens the first U.S. birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, NY. Although the clinic is shut down 10 days later and Sanger is arrested, she eventually wins support through the courts and opens another clinic in New York City in 1923.
1920
The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote, is signed into law.
1925
Florence Sabin is the first woman admitted to the National Academy of Sciences.
1943
Margaret Craighill, MD, becomes the first woman doctor to be appointed as a major in the Armed Medical Corps.
1945
Harvard Medical School finally admits women.
1947
Gerty Cori, MD, is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing the prize with her husband, also an MD.
1960
Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA is the last medical school to admit female students. This is the same year that the Food and Drug Administration approves birth control pills.
1963
Betty Friedan publishes her highly influential book The Feminine Mystique, which describes the dissatisfaction felt by middle-class American housewives with the narrow role imposed on them by society. The book becomes a best-seller and galvanizes the modern women's rights movement. Congress passes the Equal Pay Act, making it illegal for employers to pay a woman less than what a man would receive for the same job.
1966
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded by a group of feminists including Betty Friedan. One of the largest women's rights group in the U.S., NOW seeks to end sexual discrimination, especially in the workplace, by means of legislative lobbying, litigation, and public demonstrations.
1969
Louise C. Gloeckner, MD, is elected AMA vice president, becoming the highest ranking woman physician in the organization to date.
1972
The U.S. Congress passes Title IX, the groundbreaking law that prohibits gender discrimination in any educational institution that receives federal funds.
1980
Though women physicians continue to be underrepresented in the medical profession, the percentage of women medical school graduates nearly tripled between 1970 and 1980.
1981
The Association of Women’s Surgeons was founded in hopes of bringing down barriers that remain for women in surgery.
1989
Nancy Dickey, MD, is the first woman to be elected to the AMA Board of Trustees.
1990
Antonia Novello, MD, becomes the first woman appointed U.S. Surgeon General.
1998
Nancy Dickey, MD, becomes the first female president of the AMA.
2002
More than 25% of all physicians in the U.S. are women.
2003
The percentage of female medical school applicants reaches an all-time high: 49% of applicants are women.
2003
There are 10 female deans of U.S. medical schools, comprising just over 6 percent of all medical school deans.
2007
49% of the 42,315 applicants to the entering class of the 2007-2008 academic year are women. Women comprise 48% of all matriculating students. 49% of those graduating with medical degrees in 2007 are women.
2008
Nancy H. Nielsen, MD, PhD, a board-certified internist from Buffalo, N.Y., is elected as the 163rd president of the AMA. She is the second woman to hold the AMA's highest elected office in the organization’s 161-year history.
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