Through the ceiling-Women soar into health careers

No one ever told Ashley Christman or Emily Tanzler medicine wasn't for girls.

Both were encouraged to become doctors, actually ''“ Ashley was in a high school premedical program and Emily studied neuroscience over the summer as a teen. And both women, who are in their early 20s, grew up at a time when women are not only doctors, but also governors, Supreme Court justices and CEOs of major corporations. Even Barbie is more than a fashion plate now. She's been an astronaut and a veterinarian, too.

"I think we're past that stage where it's going into a man's field," said Tanzler, a second-year medical student in UF's College of Medicine.

If the percentages of female students continue to rise in the UF Health Science Center's colleges, women actually may one day dominate traditionally male professions such as medicine, dentistry and pharmacy. Just over half of UF's medical students are women and just under half of UF dental students are. In the College of Pharmacy, more than 60 percent of students are female. Women comprise 80 percent of veterinary medicine students and more than 70 percent of students in the College of Public Health and Health Professions.

"The women are (generally) just more motivated and more goal-oriented," said William H. Riffee, the College of Pharmacy dean, during a UF roundtable discussion about women in health care in August. "They do better on our exams to get into school and they're better prepared when they come into school."

Now the National Library of Medicine celebrates women doctors, honoring women whose accomplishments have earned them the title "local legend," including UF's own Rebecca Pauly, M.D. But just 50 years ago, female doctors, dentists, pharmacists, psychologists and researchers were still a rarity, a full 100 years after the first woman was admitted into medical school in the United States.

Breaking barriers

When Anita Thompson graduated in 1954, there were nine women in the College of Pharmacy. The college had been the first at UF to award a bachelor's degree to a woman in 1939, eight years before the university officially became "co-educational," and most of the male students and faculty accepted the women, Thompson says. "They expected the same from us as they did the guys," she said.

But not everyone felt the same. When she was a senior, one professor always avoided speaking to her directly. One day, after she'd asked a question, he told the class, "A woman's place is in the home."

"Some of the professors were resentful, as if they were wasting their time on us because we would probably get married and never practice pharmacy again," Thompson said. "I'm in my 51st year."

There were a few female faculty members in the late 1950s, but none of the first four female medical professors stayed at UF for more than a few years. Because women had to work harder to gain credibility in their fields, some women started at UF but left for more established medical schools to build their reputations, said Nina Stoyan-Rosenzweig, the Health Science Center's archivist.

At the same time, new fields such as physical therapy and occupational therapy were offering women opportunities to be leaders in their fields. The College of Health-Related Services (now PHHP) hired a woman with an established reputation to head its new occupational therapy department.

After the civil rights and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, more and more women felt free to pursue careers once thought to be masculine.

But change doesn't happen overnight. The career choices offered to Teresa Dolan, D.D.S., at her all-girl's Catholic high school in the 1970s were still pretty slim. Dolan, now the first female dean of the College of Dentistry, was advised to pursue nursing, teaching or religious instruction, all noble but traditionally female professions.

Only one-fifth of the students in her dental school were women and there were few female faculty members, but neither that nor the stereotype that dentists are supposed to be men stopped Dolan from pursuing a career as a dentist and college administrator.

"It's not too long ago I've had people come up to me and say, 'I didn't know a woman could be a dentist,'" Dolan said. "I think you're always aware that some eyes are on you. It always motivates me so that the issue of gender never comes into question."

Although more women are entering the health professions, in many fields there are still few in positions of authority. This could be because it will take time for the larger number of female students to increase the pool of women who are qualified for and want to pursue leadership positions, Stoyan-Rosenzweig said.

"Also, part of it is they have to be interested in administration," she said. "The women who have gone through have tended to want to be doctors and have families. They just have less time for administration."

The College of Pharmacy is an exception. There were only two women on the faculty in 1980. Now, three of the five departments in the college have female leaders, including Margaret James, Ph.D., who was the first chairwoman in the college.

"Things have changed," James said. "Women have, especially in pharmacy, gone from being the minority to the majority."

Rebecca Pauly, M.D., has been the only woman in medical meetings before. Although she says it never makes her feel like her opinion means less, she does feel a drive to be at her best to ensure the next generation of female physicians has the same opportunities she has had.

"I think the barriers I faced are minimal compared to what some women faced (in the past)," she said.

A different kind of glass ceiling

Women have always been nurses. Dorothy Smith, M.Ed., didn't have to fight for that.

Nursing was one of the first disciplines to give women the chance to rise into leadership positions. But nurses haven't always been recognized as scientists or valued for their contributions to patient care. That's what Smith was fighting for when she became the UF College of Nursing dean in 1956. She was the first female dean of a UF college.

Smith saw nurses not as helpers in the hospital, but as clinicians and scientists. Smith wanted to establish a college where all of the facets of nursing were addressed: patient care, research and education.

Smith fought to make graduate degrees possible for nurses; a master's degree in nursing was established in 1964. She also believed nursing teachers should practice as nurses, and she inspired students and faculty to achieve research and educational goals.

"Dorothy Smith was maybe described as a rogue, certainly a risk-taker, a pioneer, someone who believed very passionately that nursing was an intellectually challenging discipline," said Kathleen Long, the college's current dean, at the deans' roundtable discussion. "In the mid