Public health women doctors in England: from backwater to strategic roles in 20 years

Women doctors in public health were able to achieve consultant status, and major strategic leadership roles, well ahead of female colleagues in other areas of medical and, especially, surgical practice. This development was bound up with the struggles in the early days of the Faculty of Community Medicine to achieve its status as a separate Faculty of the Royal College of Physicians, raise standards and encourage able and committed doctors to join the specialty. This paper outlines the history of public health medicine in England between 1974 and the 1990s when, through a combination of design, and happenstance in response to organizational changes, a gender-neutral specialty was created, benefiting both men and women, and enabling the latter, in particular, to flourish.