As of April 2025, around 39 percent of professionally active licensed physicians in the United States were women. This has increased by one percent compared to the previous year. Over half, 51 percent, of physicians in the District of Columbia were women, the highest share of female physicians in the country. On the other hand, Idaho had the lowest share of female physicians in the U.S. at 29 percent.

According to a 2023 survey, 62 percent of Ob/Gyns were female, the specialty with the highest share of female doctors in the U.S., followed by pediatrics. On the other hand, the medical specialties with the lowest share of female physicians were Orthopedics, Urology, and Cardiology.

Introduction

Male and Female Doctors Statistics: Doctors play an essential role in the medical industry. Male and female doctors play critical roles in providing different healthcare services in medicine.

Historically, men have significantly dominated the medical profession. However, there has been a considerable growth in the number of female doctors over the years, as more women seek professions in medicine.

The distribution of male and female doctors across different specializations and geographic locations can vary significantly.

Key factors such as personal preferences, cultural norms, work-life balance considerations, etc., may influence the choices made by male and female doctors regarding their work environment as well as location.

In the United States, there are more male doctors than female. In 2023, the share of female doctors amounted to just **** percent, although this has increased by *** percent compared to 2021. However, there were large variations depending on the specialty. ************* were most likely to be women (among the major specialties**). Meanwhile, only ***** other specialties had more female than male physicians.

As of 2025, the number of female physicians in the U.S. amounted to *******, which represents ** percent of the total active licensed physicians in the country. That year, California had the highest number of female physicians in the country, with roughly ****** female physicians.

In the African region, female physicians accounted for only 28 percent of all physicians. This was in contrast to the European region where 53 percent of physicians were female. The statistic shows the gender distribution of physicians worldwide from 2000 to 2018, by region.

Introduction

Male and Female Doctor Statistics: Male and female doctors play a crucial role in the medical industry, significantly impacting healthcare across various fields. Traditionally, the profession has been male-dominated, but in recent years, gender dynamics have shifted noticeably. The increasing number of women in healthcare has led to more gender diversity, especially in clinical and leadership roles.

Recent statistics indicate a steady increase in the proportion of female doctors, gradually narrowing the gender gap that once favoured men. However, male doctors continue to dominate in certain fields, particularly those that require physical strength, and maintain a stronger presence in senior leadership positions within healthcare organisations. These shifting gender trends are impacting the future of the medical profession, influencing patient care and the broader structure of healthcare delivery.

The number of male physicians outnumbers female physicians in the U.S. in most specialties. The only major exceptions are found in pediatrics, child and adolescent psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, although female physicians do slightly outnumber males in a few other specialties. As of 2021, there were around 68,400 male family medicine/general practice physicians compared to 50,000 women in this specialty. Physicians in the U.S. Both the number of doctors and rate of doctors in the U.S. have increased over the years. As of 2021, there were around 946,800 active doctors of medicine in the U.S. This was around 29.9 physicians per 10,000 civilian population. In 1995, this rate stood at 24.2 physicians per 10,000 population. Physicians by state The states with the highest overall number of active physicians are California, New York, Texas, and Florida. However, the states with the highest rate of physicians per 10,000 civilian population include Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maryland. The District of Columbia has the highest rate of physicians by a large margin, with around 74.6 physicians per 10,000 population. The state with the highest annual compensation for physicians is Oklahoma, where physicians earn an annual average of 337,000 dollars.

In 2025, out of the *** thousand registered doctors in the United Kingdom, *** thousand were men and *** thousand were women. There was a more pronounced gender gap among specialist doctors in the UK, with ** thousand men to nearly ** thousand women qualified on the specialist register. Although on the GP register, women outnumber men with over ** thousand female GPs to nearly ** thousand male GPs. Gender distribution of UK doctors by age While there are **** male doctors than female doctors in total, the gender distribution of doctors in the UK looks different depending on the age group. Female doctors ********* their male counterpart in all age groups under 45 years old. Therefore, as more doctors retire, the proportion of female doctors will increase. Worldwide make-up of doctors in the UK Although the majority of medical practitioners in the UK received their medical qualification from within the UK, there is still a significant number of doctors who graduated outside the UK. As of 2024, some ** percent of registered doctors in the UK are from the European Economic Area (EEA) while a further third are international medical graduates (IMG) indicating the reliance of the NHS on immigration to support the organization’s workforce.

This statistic shows the distribution of specialist physicians in Canada from 1978 to 2023, sorted by gender. In 2022, nearly 41 percent of specialty doctors in Canada were female, and some 59 percent were male.

In Pakistan, women outnumber men in medical colleges with 80 percent enrollment, yet many fail to practice medicine following graduation. Pakistan Medical Council (PMC) states 50 percent of graduated women doctors either did not practice or left employment in a short period. Thus, the non-servicing women doctors are assumed as the one of the major causes for the overall doctors’ shortage in the country. Addressing this enduring matter, this study aims to explore and understand the factors that discourage women doctors from practicing medicine in Pakistani hospitals. The study employed qualitative exploratory inquiry with an interpretive paradigm to attain a deeper understanding of the problem. 59-semi structured interviews were conducted by non-working women doctors across the entirety of Pakistan. The narratives were then analyzed by thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti 22. The findings have resulted in the three major themes, i.e., workplace challenges, socio-cultural obstructions, and familial restrictions that possibly obstruct women from practicing medicine in hospitals. The findings suggested that accepting traditional cultural values, including entrenched gender roles in society, deters women from practicing medicine. The prevailing patriarchal societal system includes stereotypes against working women; early marriages hinder women from practicing medicine. The prevailing societal system upholds the influence of in-laws and a husband for women doctor professional employment. As a result, severe work-life conflict was reported where most women doctors ended up in their profession in the middle of struggling between socially rooted gender roles as homemakers and their professional careers—furthermore, the study found various workplace issues that posit an additional burden on already struggling women doctors. Issues include poor recruitment and selection process, transfer constraints, excessive workload with inadequate salary, harassment, gender discrimination, unsafe work environment, and little support from the administration highly contribute to the shortage of women doctors in Pakistan.

In 2023, around **** percent of physicians in South Korea were women. This represents a slight increase from the previous year. The share of female doctors in South Korea has steadily increased since 2000.

Background: There is an attrition of women physicians in academic medicine hierarchy. Scholarship in medical journals plays a direct role in career advancement, promotion, and authoritative recognition, and women physician authors are underrepresented in original research articles. Objectives: We sought to determine if women physician authors are similarly underrepresented in commentary articles within high impact journals. Design/Setting/Participants: In this observational study, we abstracted gender, degree, and authorship position from January 1, 2014 to October 16, 2018 among commentary articles in three high impact journals: 1) JAMA Viewpoint; 2) NEJM Perspective; and 3) Annals of Internal Medicine Ideas and Opinions. Primary Outcome Measure: To compare the percentages of authors by gender, degree, authorship position, and journal in commentary articles, and assess for trends over a five-year period. Secondary Outcome Measures: To compare the proportion of men and women physician authorship of commentaries relative to the proportion of men and women physician faculty within academic medicine. To examine the gender concordance between last and first authors. Results: Of the 2,087 articles during the study period, 48% were men physician first authors compared to 17% women physician first authors (p<0.0001). Of the 1,477 articles with more than one author, similar distributions were found with regard to last authors: 55% were men physicians compared to only 12% of women physicians (p<0.0001). The proportion of women physician first authors increased over time, however the proportion of women physician last authors remained stagnant. Women authors in the first and last position were concordant in 9% of articles, men authors in the first and last author position were concordant in 55% of articles. Conclusions: Women physician authors remain underrepresented in commentary articles compared to men physician authors in the first and last author position. The proportion of women first authors was lowest with a women last author.

According to a survey of practicing physicians in various countries, female physicians generally had lower salaries than their male counterparts. The average male physician in the United States earned 386,000 U.S. dollars while female doctors were paid just 300,000 U.S. dollars. In terms of percentage, the pay gap was widest in Portugal, where male doctors earned over 60 percent more than female doctors.

In Pakistan, women outnumber men in medical colleges with 80 percent enrollment, yet many fail to practice medicine following graduation. Pakistan Medical Council (PMC) states 50 percent of graduated women doctors either did not practice or left employment in a short period. Thus, the non-servicing women doctors are assumed as the one of the major causes for the overall doctors’ shortage in the country. Addressing this enduring matter, this study aims to explore and understand the factors that discourage women doctors from practicing medicine in Pakistani hospitals. The study employed qualitative exploratory inquiry with an interpretive paradigm to attain a deeper understanding of the problem. 59-semi structured interviews were conducted by non-working women doctors across the entirety of Pakistan. The narratives were then analyzed by thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti 22. The findings have resulted in the three major themes, i.e., workplace challenges, socio-cultural obstructions, and familial restrictions that possibly obstruct women from practicing medicine in hospitals. The findings suggested that accepting traditional cultural values, including entrenched gender roles in society, deters women from practicing medicine. The prevailing patriarchal societal system includes stereotypes against working women; early marriages hinder women from practicing medicine. The prevailing societal system upholds the influence of in-laws and a husband for women doctor professional employment. As a result, severe work-life conflict was reported where most women doctors ended up in their profession in the middle of struggling between socially rooted gender roles as homemakers and their professional careers—furthermore, the study found various workplace issues that posit an additional burden on already struggling women doctors. Issues include poor recruitment and selection process, transfer constraints, excessive workload with inadequate salary, harassment, gender discrimination, unsafe work environment, and little support from the administration highly contribute to the shortage of women doctors in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, women outnumber men in medical colleges with 80 percent enrollment, yet many fail to practice medicine following graduation. Pakistan Medical Council (PMC) states 50 percent of graduated women doctors either did not practice or left employment in a short period. Thus, the non-servicing women doctors are assumed as the one of the major causes for the overall doctors’ shortage in the country. Addressing this enduring matter, this study aims to explore and understand the factors that discourage women doctors from practicing medicine in Pakistani hospitals. The study employed qualitative exploratory inquiry with an interpretive paradigm to attain a deeper understanding of the problem. 59-semi structured interviews were conducted by non-working women doctors across the entirety of Pakistan. The narratives were then analyzed by thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti 22. The findings have resulted in the three major themes, i.e., workplace challenges, socio-cultural obstructions, and familial restrictions that possibly obstruct women from practicing medicine in hospitals. The findings suggested that accepting traditional cultural values, including entrenched gender roles in society, deters women from practicing medicine. The prevailing patriarchal societal system includes stereotypes against working women; early marriages hinder women from practicing medicine. The prevailing societal system upholds the influence of in-laws and a husband for women doctor professional employment. As a result, severe work-life conflict was reported where most women doctors ended up in their profession in the middle of struggling between socially rooted gender roles as homemakers and their professional careers—furthermore, the study found various workplace issues that posit an additional burden on already struggling women doctors. Issues include poor recruitment and selection process, transfer constraints, excessive workload with inadequate salary, harassment, gender discrimination, unsafe work environment, and little support from the administration highly contribute to the shortage of women doctors in Pakistan.

This statistic depicts the percentage of U.S. adults that have select preferences for the gender of their physicians, according to a survey conducted in August 2018. Some 46 percent of women stated that t hey would prefer a female doctor.

In 2022, the share of female licensed physicians in the United States and the District of Columbia stood at **** percent. This included both Doctors of Medicine and Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine. In comparison, just ***** in *** physicians were women in 2010.

Doctor checkup past 12 months by sex, race/ethnicity, and grade, California Healthy Kids Survey, 2015-16METADATA:Notes (String): Lists table title, sourceYear (String): Year of surveyCategory (String): Lists the category representing the data: Santa Clara County is for total surveyed population, sex: Male and Female, race/ethnicity: African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latino and White (non-Hispanic White only) and grade level (7th, 9th, 11th, or non-traditional).Percent (Numeric): Percentage of middle and high school students who had a doctor checkup in the past 12 months

Abstract

The 2006-07 Sri Lanka Demographic and Health Survey (SLDHS) is the fourth in a series of DHS surveys to be held in Sri Lanka-the first three having been implemented in 1987, 1993, and 2000. Teams visited 2,106 sample points across Sri Lanka and collected data from a nationally representative sample of almost 20,000 households and over 14,700 women age 15-49.

A nationally representative sample of 21,600 housing units was selected for the survey and 19,872 households were enumerated to give district level estimates (excluding Northern Province). Detailed information was collected from all ever-married women aged 15-49 years and about their children below five years at the time of the survey. Within the households interviewed, a total of 15,068 eligible women were identified, of whom 14,692 were successfully interviewed.

The Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) carried out the 2006-07 SLDHS for the Health Sector Development Project (HSDP) of the Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition, a project funded by the World Bank. The objective of the survey is to provide data needed to monitor and evaluate the impact of population, health, and nutrition programmes implemented by different government agencies. Additionally, it also aims to measure the impact of interventions made under the HSDP towards improving the quality and efficiency of health care services as a whole.

All 25 districts of Sri Lanka were included at the design stage. The final sample has only 20 districts, however, after dropping the 5 districts of the Northern Province (Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mannar, Vavuniya, and Mullativu), due to the security situation there.

OBJECTIVES

The objective of this report is to publish the final findings of the 2006-07 SLDHS. This final report provides information mainly on background characteristics of respondents, fertility, reproductive health and maternal care, child health, nutrition, women's empowerment, and awareness of HIV/AIDS and prevention. It is expected that the content of this report will satisfy the urgent needs of users of this information.

MAIN RESULTS

FERTILITY Survey results indicate that there has been a slight upturn in the total fertility rate since the 2000 SLDHS. The total fertility rate for Sri Lanka is 2.3, meaning that, if current age-specific fertility rates were to remain unchanged in the future, a woman in Sri Lanka would have an average of 2.3 children by the end of her childbearing period. This is somewhat higher than the total fertility rate of 1.9 measured in the 2000 SLDHS.

Fertility is only slightly lower in urban areas than in rural areas (2.2 and 2.3 children per woman, respectively); however, it is higher in the estate areas (2.5 children per woman). Interpretation of variations in fertility by administrative districts is limited by the small samples in some districts. Nevertheless, results indicate that Galle and Puttalam districts have fertility rates of 2.1 or below, which is at what is known as “replacement level” fertility, i.e., the level that is necessary to maintain population size over time. Differences in fertility by level of women's education and a measure of relative wealth status are minimal.

FAMILY PLANNING According to the survey findings, knowledge of any method of family planning is almost universal in Sri Lanka and there are almost no differences between ever-married and currently married women. Over 90 percent of currently married women have heard about pills, injectables, female sterilization, and the IUD. Eight out of ten respondents know about some traditional method of delaying or avoiding pregnancies.

Although the proportion of currently married women who have heard of at least one method of family planning has been high for some time, knowledge of some specific methods has increased recently. Since 1993, knowledge of implants has increased five-fold-from about 10 percent in 1993 to over 50 percent in 2006-07. Awareness about pill, IUD, injectables, implants, and withdrawal has also increased. On the other hand, awareness of male sterilization has dropped by 14 percentage points.

CHILD HEALTH The study of infant and child mortality is critical for assessment of population and health policies and programmes. Infant and child mortality rates are also regarded as indices reflecting the degree of poverty and deprivation of a population. Survey data show that for the most recent five-year period before the survey, the infant mortality rate is 15 deaths per 1,000 live births and under-five mortality is 21 deaths per 1,000 live births. Thus, one in every 48 Sri Lankan children dies before reaching age five. The neonatal mortality rate is 11 deaths per 1,000 live births and the postneonatal mortality rate is 5 deaths per 1,000 live births. The child mortality rate is 5 deaths per 1,000 children surviving to age one year.

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH The survey shows that virtually all mothers (99 percent) in Sri Lanka receive antenatal care from a health professional (doctor specialist, doctor, or midwife). The proportion receiving care from a skilled provider is remarkably uniform across all categories for age, residence, district, woman's education, and household wealth quintile. Even in the estate sector, antenatal care usage is at the same high level. Although doctors are the most frequently seen provider (96 percent), women also go to public health midwives often for prenatal care (44 percent).

BREASTFEEDING AND NUTRITION Poor nutritional status is one of the most important health and welfare problems facing Sri Lanka today and particularly affects women and children. The survey data show that 17 percent of children under five are stunted or short for their age, while 15 percent of children under five are wasted or too thin for their height. Overall, 21 percent of children are underweight, which may reflect stunting, wasting, or both. As for women, at the national level, 16 percent of women are considered to be thin (with a body mass index < 18.5); however, only 6 percent of women are considered to be moderately or severely thin.

Poor breastfeeding and infant feeding practices can have adverse consequences for the health and nutritional status of children. Fortunately, breastfeeding in Sri Lanka is universal and generally of fairly long duration; 97 percent of newborns are breastfed within one day after delivery and 76 percent of infants under 6 months are exclusively breastfed, lower than the recommended 100 percent exclusive breastfeeding for children under 6 months. The median duration of any breastfeeding is 33 months in Sri Lanka and the median duration of exclusive breastfeeding is 5 months.

HIV/AIDS The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a serious health concern in the world today because of its high case fatality rate and the lack of a cure. Awareness of AIDS is almost universal among Sri Lankan adults, with 92 percent of ever-married women saying that they have heard about AIDS. Nevertheless, only 22 percent of ever-married women are classified as having “comprehensive knowledge” about AIDS, i.e., knowing that consistent use of condoms and having just one faithful partner can reduce the chance of getting infected, knowing that a healthy-looking person can be infected, and knowing that AIDS cannot be transmitted by sharing food or by mosquito bites. Such a low level of knowledge about AIDS implies that a concerted effort is needed to address misconceptions about HIV transmission. Programs might be focused in the estate sector and especially in Batticaloa, Ampara, and Nuwara Eliya districts where comprehensive knowledge is lowest.

Moreover, a composite indicator on stigma towards HIV-infected people shows that only 8 percent of ever-married women expressed accepting attitudes toward persons living with HIV/AIDS. Overall, only about one- half of ever-married women age 15-49 years know where to get an HIV test.

WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT AND DEMOGRAPHIC AND HEALTH OUTCOMES The 2006-07 SLDHS collected data on women's empowerment, their participation in decisionmaking, and attitudes towards wife beating. Survey results show that more than 90 percent of currently married women, either alone or jointly with their husband, make decisions on how their income is used. However, husbands' control over women's earnings is higher among women with no education (15 percent) than among women with higher education (4 percent).

In Sri Lanka, the husband is usually the main source of household income; two-thirds of women earn less than their husband. Although the majority of women earn less than their husband, almost half have autonomy in decisions about how to spend their earnings.

The survey also collected information on who decides how the husband's cash earnings are spent. The majority of couples (60 percent) make joint decisions on how the husband's cash income is used. More than 1 in 5 women (23 percent) reported that they decide how their husband's earnings are used; another 16 percent of the women reported that their husband mainly decides how his earnings are spent.

Geographic coverage

A nationally representative sample of 21,600 housing units was selected for the survey and 19,872 households were enumerated to give district level estimates (excluding Northern Province).

Analysis unit

• Household
• Women age 15-49
• Children under five

Universe

In principle, the sample was designed to cover private households in the areas sampled. The population residing in institutions and institutional households was excluded. For the detailed individual interview, the eligibility criteria wereall ever-married women aged 15-49 years who slept in the household the previous night and about their children below five years at the