New book focuses on the lives of women in medical school at KU during the ’50s, ‘60s and ’70s

In her new book, author Anne Walling, M.B., Ch.B., professor emerita of family and community medicine at KU School of Medicine-Wichita, examines life for women in medical school between 1948 to 1975. “Women in Medicine: Stories from the Girls in White” reveals how it was in those early days — sometimes frustrating, always difficult and ultimately rewarding.

Originally meant to be an oral history project, Walling turned the project into a book based on interviews of 37 women who were graduates of KU’s medical school between 1948 and 1975. All became successful physicians. At the time she interviewed them during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, about a third of them were still practicing.

Walling based the title of her book on a textbook that students at various medical schools were required to read over the years titled, “The Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School.” That text was based on interviews at KU School of Medicine conducted in 1957-58 by a team of social scientists from Chicago. While that book, published in 1961, briefly acknowledges the presence of women at the school, one key sentence reads, “In this book we shall talk mainly of boys becoming medical men.”

While the older text set out to describe the medical school experience at the time, Walling said the women had their own tales that didn’t necessarily match the story being told in that book.

One of the women Walling interviewed, who had been assigned “The Boys in White,” said she resented having to read it. “During those years, American women were expected to be clever, domestic and decorative,” Walling said. “Society expected them to get married and have kids.”

Those Walling interviewed noted that many people in their lives tried to warn them not to enroll in medical school — that it would be too difficult. “The women who lived it told me they knew they would face hardships,” Walling said. “But they wanted to be seen as smart and capable.”

Even the process of interviewing for a spot in medical school was a bit intimidating. Walling said prospective female students were asked such questions as whether their husband approved or how it felt to be taking a spot in the program from a man.

They all agreed that medical school was hard for men, too, but some of the issues were unique to women. “One of the ladies was six months pregnant when she showed up for her obstetrics residency,” Walling said. “She knew there was all kinds of uproar behind the scenes about having a pregnant woman in the program, but nobody acknowledged it until about 10 days before she was due.”

At the time, there were no policies to follow. There were no separate changing rooms or sleeping quarters. Women just had to figure it out.

 “They just became very good at navigating problems,” Walling said. “At times they were tempted to argue and fight, but they just kept going. Even through the end of their careers.”

The women were told it was a waste of money to train them to become physicians because they would likely drop out or leave the profession to get married. They were often not afforded access to the same equipment or opportunities as the male students. And there were few female role models in medicine.

Many of the women Walling interviewed said once they became physicians, they were treated like a liability and paid less than the men with the same medical degree. “They also faced resistance from other women, including the wives of men in the practice who didn’t want them there,” Walling said.

The sense among the “girls in white” was that it wasn’t so much the mistreatment that bothered them. “There was an underlying feeling they had of being underestimated or ignored. That’s really what got to them. These women knew they had to work harder to prove they were reliable. And in the end,” Walling said, “these women did develop credibility.”

In 1972, Title IX legislation became law, prohibiting the exclusion of women from schools receiving federal funding. Enrollment of women at KU’s medical school had been as low as 2%, but in 1975 that jumped to 20%. Now, around 54.6 % of American medical students are women, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

“I have huge admiration for these women,” Walling said of the women profiled in her book. “Their love of medicine, their meaningful work and the way they lived worthwhile lives.”