Although women do not hold the top positions, they are the ones who are redefining the curriculum. In medicine, women are change-makers. They have brought with them hospice care, preventive medicine, and alternative therapies. This is why it is important for future women doctors to know their roots and to value what they have to offer. For instance, the National Medical Ambulatory Care Survey reported that women doctors treat more minority patients, children and the poor than their male counterparts.
Women doctors are themselves the best medicine toward insuring the health of women patients.
Let's look at some historical facts. By the end of the 15th century, as medicine became established academically in various centers in Europe, the movement to exclude women from formal involvement in medical care gained momentum. Midwives became the focal target of witch hunting. Some scholars say as many as four million women were killed between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Today's medical system arose out of this persecution.