ABSTRACT
Women constitute about 38 percent of graduating medical students and 15 percent of practicing physicians in the United States, a dramatic increase in two decades (Relman 1989), Asian and Asian American women have entered careers as physicians at high rates, but other women of color remain poorly represented. Women's influx into careers as physicians sparks considerable speculation about how women's presence in medical careers will alter medical practice in the United States. Will increasing proportions of women doctors bring a distinctively feminine, humanizing character to the practice of medicine, or will processes of selection, socialization, and allocation within a still male-dominated medical-care system perpetuate existing patterns, despite change in the gender composition of the profession (see Eisenberg 1989; Lorber 1991)?
