General Medical Council announces women with a licence to practice have overtaken men in number, following a generational shift toward female doctors since the 1970s
Female doctors now outnumber men for the first time in the UK.
The General Medical Council announced women with a licence to practice make up 50.04% compared to 49.96% male doctors. It marks a generational shift towards women training to become doctors with 164,440 now registered alongside 164,195 men.
Professor Dame Carrie MacEwen, chair of the GMC and a consultant ophthalmologist herself, said: “This is a significant milestone. The demographics of the medical workforce are rapidly changing, and that diversity will benefit patients.”
Separate data from the government agency Skills for Care shows more than a fifth of carer roles in Britain are now taken by men for the first time since records began. Women still make up over 79% of the UK’s combined health and social care workforce. Nine in 10 nurses are female.
The GMC data also showed for the first time there are more doctors from ethnic minority backgrounds than white doctors working in the UK. As of 28 February 2025 some 58% of GPs were female compared to 42% male. Specialties with most women doctors are obstetrics and gynaecology which is 63% female compared to 37% male, and paediatrics which is 61% female and 39% male.
The doctors’ regulator said a driving factor is more women joining UK medical schools since 2018/19. In 2023/24 the UK medical student intake was 60% female, and in Northern Ireland even higher at 72%.
Professor Scarlett McNally, President of the Medical Women’s Federation and a surgeon, said: “This huge change should be celebrated. The public should respect the doctor and ask her about their treatment options. We must all value women doctors as an excellent untapped talent and stop waiting for a mythical knight in shining armour.”
The history of women in healthcare in Britain shows they had long made up virtually all of the nursing workforce. In 1875 legislation was enacted allowing women to study medicine but only some institutions actually allowed them to enrol as doctors.
It was only in 1944, four years before the creation of the NHS, that the government decided it would only provide funding for medical schools that admitted what it termed a “reasonable” proportion of women – about one fifth.
In 1965 women still made up only 21% of doctors on the medical register but there was a rapid increase in the number of women on the register from the 1970s.
The latest GMC data shows specialties with the lowest proportion of women are surgery at 17% female compared to 83% male), ophthalmology at 35% female and 65% male, and emergency medicine at 37.1% female and 62.9% male. However the number of women in these specialties is climbing.
Dr Latifa Patel, chairwoman of the BMA Representative Body, added: “To have more female than male doctors in the UK is a significant milestone for the profession and for patients. Retaining women doctors in the workplace, in the NHS and happy and fulfilled in their roles, must be a priority.”
