| POPULATION CHARACTERISTICS |
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Like many other occupational fields, the health professions have long been characterized by gender disparities. Males have generally dominated medical, dental, and pharmaceutical schools, while women have made up the majority of nursing and public health students. This disparity lessened between the early 1980s and late 1990s. For example, dental schools saw a 122 percent increase in female enrollment as a proportion of total enrollment, from 17.0 percent in 1980-81 to 37.8 percent in 1999-2000. The proportion of medical students who were women also increased dramatically over this time period. In 1980-81, females made up slightly more than one quarter of medical students; by 1999-2000, this proportion had increased to 43 percent, a 66 percent increase over this time period. Women also made up a larger portion of students in schools of public health and pharmacy in 1999-2000 than in the early 1980s.
As women have increased their representation in health professions schools that have traditionally been dominated by men, their concentration has decreased somewhat in nursing, a field that has been and continues to be made up almost entirely of women. While the numbers of students enrolled in nursing schools increased over the past two decades, the proportion of nursing students who were women declined from 94.3 percent in 1980-81 to 89.8 percent in 1999-2000, reflecting men's increasing role in the nursing profession.