Statistics

Women in Surgery

According to UCAS, in 2016 58% of people accepted on to medicine and dentistry degree courses in the UK were women. In the same year, women made up 11.1% of consultant surgeons in England. The increased proportion of female medical students does not appear to be translating through into a similarly increased proportion of women surgeons, however, the number of women consultants is on the rise.

The proportions of both consultants and trainees are increasing steadily and at a similar rate. There remains, however, a large gap between the numbers of women who go into training, and those that become consultants. This may reflect the fact that women are more likely to train flexibly and so take longer to complete their training.

Women are now represented in all ten surgical specialties and at all levels within a surgical career.

More details on the numbers of women in surgery are available from the WinS office, or from the Health and Social Care Information Centre.