More women are entering surgical fields than ever, but the rate at which the gender balance in surgery is changing lags behind other areas in medicine and varies among surgical specialties.
Research presented at the 2026 AMA Poster Showcase examined women representation in orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery, which have historically had among the lowest proportions of women trainees across all surgical specialties.
What did the research find, and what could it mean for women entering medical school with aims to pursue a career in surgery? Here’s a look at the data.
Work to be done
For the poster presentation, researchers examined longitudinal trends in female resident representation in orthopaedic surgery from 2010–2023 and compared those shifts with trends in neurological surgery across the same time frame.
Women representation increased significantly in both specialties over the 13-year time period. In neurosurgery, the number of women entering residency grew from 14.3% of residency positions in 2010 to 25.6% in 2013. The growth rate was similar in orthopaedic surgery, with incoming female residents making up 12.2% of the total PGY-1 population in 2010 and 22.4% in 2023.
Despite these gains, women—who account for a slight majority of incoming medical students—are outnumbered by men in both specialties, highlighting persistent disparities in surgical training.
When AMA member Kimberly Templeton, MD, did her orthopaedic surgery residency training in the early 1990s, she was the first woman resident in her program and one of two women in the Chicago area training in the field.
Now a professor and vice-chair of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Kansas (KU) School of Medicine and Health System, Dr. Templeton said she was encouraged by the growth in relative representation and, with more residency positions in the field available than ever before, this results in an increase in the raw number of women residents training in orthopaedic surgery.
“We’re making headway with the increase in the percentage of residents in training who are women and with the increase in programs. The absolute number of women in orthopaedics continues to grow, which points to even more progress in the future. The more women residents (and faculty) in a program, the more women that program will continue to train,” she noted.
Yet, she said, the rate of change isn’t nearly fast enough, citing a 2021 study that found that it could take around 200 years for orthopaedic surgery to reach gender parity with the rest of medicine and estimated that at current rates of increase, gender parity in orthopaedic surgery would mirror that of the U.S. population in the year 2354.
Women make up more than half of medical students. To get more women in surgical training, the focus needs to be on the mix of the applicant pipeline, Dr. Templeton said.
Data from the 2025 Match, which was published by the Association of American Medical Colleges, shows that 487 women applied to orthopaedic surgery during that Match cycle. The figure translates to women making up about 26% of the applicant pool. That aligned closely with the breakdown of matched applicants by gender for that application cycle.
“The data would show that the Match rates for women and men are the same,” Dr. Templeton said. “The issue is in the number of applications. To achieve parity, more women need to apply, which starts with getting more women interested in the field.”
The University of Kansas School of Medicine is a member of the AMA UME Curricular Enrichment Program, which enables educators to assign specific elements and receive reports on student progress, track via a dashboard, send reminder emails and customize reporting options. Learn more.
Navigating barriers
When listing the reasons that women don’t apply to surgical specialties, Dr. Templeton offered that several of them may be based on cultural stereotypes that for the most part are no longer relevant for the specialties at issue.
Emily Bundy is a second-year medical student training in Washington and collaborated on the research poster whose findings were highlighted earlier. She entered medical school with an interest in a surgical career path.
“There's a lot of narratives out there from the past that are not really rooted in truth,” Bundy said. One such narrative, specific to orthopaedic surgery, is that the field “requires a lot of physical strength that women would not have. That’s a tough narrative that unfortunately hasn't been completely broken or debunked, to some people.”
Another stereotype that can discourage women from applying to certain surgical specialties that is that some fields have a “bro mentality.”
In this article, medical students will get valuable information regarding:
- Unique barriers to surgical careers and how women in medical school can navigate them.
- The importance of mentors for women interested in surgical careers.
- The value of shadowing in the operating room (OR) early in medical school.
- How on-campus and specialty interest organizations can open doors for women interested in surgery.
- Why rotations can serve as a valuable data point in the decision to pursue a surgical specialty in residency.
