Women in veterinary medicine

Men make up around 12% of the students in my veterinary school. Yesterday, a guest lecturer commented on that, and noted that in another school, a recent year had no male students at all. I posted a while back about the contributions of improved large animal sedation to the introduction of women into veterinary medicine, which was once a male-dominated profession. Commenters have noted that other factors were almost certainly in play as well. But improved sedation methods in large animals aren’t going to explain why women are starting to dominate this profession rather than being content with half of it.

Interestingly, women do not dominate human medical schools in the same way. Johns Hopkins reports that their classes are made up of 50/50 male and female students. There has also been some commentary in the blogosphere recently about how many fewer female science bloggers are out there, with notes that women are as likely as men to get PhDs, but less likely to stay in academia.


So why are there more women becoming veterinarians these days than men? I don’t think anyone knows. I have two personal theories:

• Vet med is often seen as a caretaking profession, something that may appeal strongly to more women than men.
• Why vet med and not human med? One difference is that vet med pays a lot less. Are women more tolerant of low pay than men?

Any other ideas?