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Despite the rising number of women enrolled in medical schools,  a new study presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons showed that the rate of representation of women in orthopaedics has increased at a statistically significantly lower rate than other medical specialties.

However, the study authors found that in some regions of the country, including the Pacific West and South Atlantic, there has been notable growth in the number of women orthopaedic surgeons.

According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, the percentage of orthopaedic residents who are women has gradually increased from 0.6% in 1970 to 20.3% in 2023. Although this study demonstrates a national increase in the percentage of women orthopaedic surgeons entering the workforce from 2018 to 2023 – a trend that is anticipated to continue in the future – growth remains slower compared with other surgical specialties. It also highlights the need for additional efforts to recruit more women into orthopaedics.

Study Data and Findings

The study authors retrospectively reviewed data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) database to identify practicing orthopaedic Medicare providers who are women and their patient caseloads. The number of practicing orthopaedic surgeons in the data set averaged 23,682 annually across the 6-year period.

The CMS data were also queried to identify other surgical and non-surgical medical specialties, including general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine and family medicine, urology, and anesthesiology for comparison.

Highlights of the findings include the following:

• The mean percentage of women orthopaedic surgeons across all states was 6.02% in 2018, increasing annually up to 7.51% in 2023. The overall increase across the 6-year period was 1.49%. This value was statistically significantly lower than the growth of women practicing in other surgical specialties, including general surgery (5.50%) and obstetrics and gynecology (6.93%).
• The percentages of women orthopaedic CMS providers also varied by state, from a low of 0.0% in Alaska to a high of 16.5% for Hawaii in the 2023 data set.
• Analysis of geographic trends showed a 14% and 23% increase, respectively, in women orthopaedic surgeons in the Pacific West and South Atlantic regions from 2018 to 2023. These regions had the highest growth rates for women providers across the various surgical and non-surgical specialties included in the comparison.
• Caseload per orthopaedic CMS provider per state ranged from an average of 2264 in 2018 to a peak of 2424 in 2022.

There are limitations to this study. The information is restricted to CMS providers, which does not capture all orthopaedic surgeons practicing in the US. However, this population represents a large proportion of orthopaedic surgeons. It presents a “worst-case” scenario, as previous studies have speculated that gender disparity may be higher among orthopaedic arthroplasty surgeons compared with other orthopaedic subspecialties.

Source

Phillips MV, Wilson SE, Atkinson TS, Ogeh T, Woodhams WH. Trends in gender diversity in the field of orthopaedic surgery. Presented at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, March 10-14, 2025, in San Diego, California.