Pioneering Female Doctors You Should Know
Women are often under-represented in science and technology fields. These are some of the highest-paying professions in the modern economy. The situation is even more challenging for women of color. Despite decades of progress, Black women in medicine still make up only 2% of the physician workforce according to the Association of Black Women Physicians. This is despite accounting for over 6% of the total population in 2023.
These systemic hurdles also mean the field has an impressive number of success stories. These women staked everything and overcame trials with flying colors. Here are some of the pioneering Black female doctors you should know about.
1) Rebecca Crumpler
Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895) was born to free Black parents. She was raised in Pennsylvania by her aunt, who was a locally respected physician. After training as a nurse, Crumpler moved to Massachusetts. She attended the New England Female Medical College and graduated as the school’s only Black student, with help from a private scholarship. Crumpler then entered the medical field as the only Black woman doctor in America during the Civil War.
Despite facing great adversity, Rebecca Lee Crumpler showed the world what it was missing by excluding Black women from medicine. She left a remarkable legacy as a hardworking and distinguished doctor. She also published one of the first medical books authored by a woman. Her ‘Book of Medical Discourses’ emphasized preventative care for women and children at a time when most infections were lethal.
2) Marilyn Gaston
Marilyn Hughes Gaston (born 1939) is one of today’s most accomplished Black female physicians. Growing up poor, Gaston still pursued her dream of becoming a doctor. Her mother Dorothy Hughes’ struggle with cervical cancer without medical insurance partly inspired her. In 1964, she graduated from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine as the only Black and only female student in her class. While completing her internship at Philadelphia General Hospital, Gaston encountered a child with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). This rare blood cell condition was incurable at the time. Her groundbreaking research on the disease led to a breakthrough study in 1986. This work landed her the position as head of the Bureau of Primary Health Care at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
Gaston was the first Black woman to lead an HRSA bureau and a leading SCD scholar. She also made other invaluable contributions to medicine throughout her long career. She has received every award that the U.S. Public Health Service offers.
3) Patricia Bath
Patricia Era Bath (1942-2019) was a leading ophthalmologist and one of the few prominent women in her field. Born to an immigrant father, Bath’s parents always encouraged her to aim high. She took that advice to heart. As a teenager, Bath became a National Science Foundation scholar and conducted cancer research alongside her studies. During her internship in her native Harlem, the high number of blind patients in the African-American community struck her. She devoted the rest of her career to ophthalmology (eye surgery). In 1978, she founded the Ophthalmic Assistant Training Program at UCLA, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to lead such a program.
After retiring in 1993, UCLA hired Bath as the first woman on its honorary staff. Bath left behind a valuable legacy of research and continued her philanthropic work until she passed away in 2019. Her outstanding surgical career is comparable only to that of Dr. Alexa Canady, a pioneering Black female pediatric neurosurgeon.
