The increasing proportion of women in the medical profession has been followed keenly both by conservative and feminist observers during the past three decades. Statistics both in Europe and in the United States tend to confirm that women work mainly in niches of the health care system or medical specialties characterized by relatively low earnings or prestige. The segregation of medical work has become increasingly recognized as a sign of inequality between female and male members of the medical profession.

Medicine as a social organization is not a universal structure: Health care...