He found that in 1900, when 11.6% of the nation’s population was Black, 1.3% of physicians were Black. In 1940, when 9.7% of the total population was Black, 2.8% of physicians were Black — 2.7% of were Black men and 0.1% were Black women. By 2018, when 12.8% of the total population was Black, 5.4% of U.S. physicians were Black — 2.6% Black men and 2.8% Black women.

Although the percentage of Black women physicians increased 2.7 percentage points between 1940 and 2018, the proportion of physicians who are Black men during the same period has remained essentially unchanged.

“If medical leadership is serious about making the physician workforce more representative of the general population, much more effective policies need to be conceptualized and implemented,” Ly said.

Due to discrimination, women of different races could not rely solely on husband’s income to support a family as was a trend for the large portion of White families in the 1940s through the 1970s. Jones states, “you were not going to raise a family on one Black man’s salary” (Jones, 256). For example, “90% of Black college and university women” in 1955 were attending higher education to prepare for an occupation (Jones, 250). The same could not be said of many White women overall, with whom it was frequently a goal to meet a husband through college or before college. Britney Nicole Gilmore’s piece also investigates the role of race and culture in educational attainment in “Hispanic Women’s Higher Education Experiences.” She investigates the hypothesis that Hispanic culture specifically influences Hispanic women and their decision making process when considering higher education. She argues that Hispanic women’s lower participation rate in higher education was not only a result of discrimination. She argues, “the belief to be more involved in family possibly becomes overwhelming for Hispanic women,” contributing to lower percentages of Hispanic women earning college degrees compared to other race groups (Gilmore, 9).