Women Doctors in War

Chapter 5. Out Of Place: Women Military Doctors in Cold War America

Chapter Five OUT OF PLACE Women Military Doctors in Cold War America W ith the end of World War II, Americans were eager to return to peacetime, and although they hoped for economic prosperity, they feared another depression. Now that the wartime emergency was over, women were encouraged to return to their homes so that men could find jobs and support their families. As the armed forces demobilized, former servicewomen were expected to get married and start families. The vast majority of uniformed women physicians were automatically and arbitrarily discharged at the end of the war, even though the demobilization process created a severe postwar physician shortage for both the Army and Navy Medical Corps. Within a few short years, the armed forces found themselves fighting a war in Korea, and so critical was the need for physicians that military officials eventually asked Congress to pass legislation authorizing them to grant permanent commissions to women physicians. Due to cultural expectations and the roles of women in the United States during the 1950s and 60s, however, the number of women physicians in the army, navy, and air force remained tiny well into the 1970s. This chapter explores the careers of women physicians in the armed services from the period immediately following World War II to the creation of the All Volunteer Force in 1973. Second Choice The armed forces’ attitudes toward and limited utilization of women physicians from the end of World War II through the wars in Korea and Vietnam reflected the position of women doctors in American society, which was highly tentative. During these years, many people believed that men made the best physicians and often refused to accord women physicians the status and respect automatically granted to their male counterparts. Women doctors were assumed to be second choice, useful only when male doctors were unavailable. When World War II ended, for example, women physicians working in civilian hospitals were frequently fired to make room on staff for male doc- Women Military Doctors in Cold War America 113 tors returning from war. Once male physicians were available again, supervisors frequently viewed women doctors as problematic employees compared to their male colleagues. According to a poll of one hundred hospital chiefs of staff conducted during the late 1940s, the chiefs believed women physicians were often “emotionally unstable” and frequently “talked too much.” If a woman doctor was married, said the chiefs, chances were that she would become pregnant and “unreliable.” If she was not married, they assumed she was “frustrated.” During the immediate postwar years, the dismissal rate for women physicians was 75 percent higher than that of male doctors on staff at the same institutions. In August 1945, a report by the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor indicated that women had made “permanent inroads” into practically every business and profession during the war “except as doctors.” The number of women who elected to become doctors “remained fairly static” during the war. In 1941 there were 1,146 women students in approved medical schools, and in 1944 there were 1,176. The report suggested that the reason women continued to shy away from medicine was that while the cost of a medical education continued to climb, women physicians on average earned significantly less than men. The average yearly income of all physicians in 1941 was $5,179; during the war the average salary of women physicians was $3,000. The reason for this discrepancy, according to the report, was the difference in medical specialties between male and female physicians. Women tended to specialize in children’s diseases and psychiatry because it was easier for a woman to obtain proper training in these fields than in higher-paying specialties such as surgery and orthopedics. Within three years, a significant change occurred in the number of women entering medical school, as women who were still in college at the end of the war entered medical school while male veteran G.I. Bill students were still undergraduates . Graduation rates for women medical students peaked between 1948 and 1951 when women comprised from 7.1 to 12.1 percent of all medical school graduates, the highest number since 1900. Unfortunately, the “glut” of newly graduated women physicians further decreased their value in the eyes of employers. As soon as the number of applicants to medical schools began to exceed the prewar level, some institutions returned to strict gender-based admission quotas similar to those used prior to the war, thus limiting...