The American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) is a group dedicated to unifying and advocating for women in the medical profession and has also provided international service-based aid. AMWA was founded on November 18, 1915, by Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen and Dr. Marion Craig Potter. These two women were part of a small group gathered at the Chicago Women’s Club to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Mary Thompson Hospital and create a representative group for women in the practice of medicine. Originally named the Medical Women’s National Association (MWNA) until 1937, the group sought to unite and create connections between the nation’s vast and often isolated population of women doctors and grapple with what it means to be a woman in the medical profession. The creation of MWNA came as a direct response to the American Medical Association’s (AMA) shortcomings in meeting the needs of women physicians in a meaningful way. MWNA sought to unite women physicians in response to these shortcomings.

In its early years, MWNA organized a conference in the few days preceding annual AMA conferences as a chance for the women doctors in attendance to meet each other and discuss issues of interest to them. When the United States entered the First World War on April 2, 1917, MWNA became galvanized by the War Department’s refusal to allow women physicians to serve and took up the cause of allowing women physicians to participate in the desperately needed medical work in Europe. MWNA created the War Service Committee to complete this task, which became known as the American Women’s Hospital (AWH). The AWH gained international prominence under the leadership of Dr. Rosalie Morton Slaughter. The AWH served to help those suffering in Europe due to the war and advance the causes of women physicians, setting up volunteer hospitals run by women physicians in France to deliver aid primarily to civilians left without medical care. After Dr. Slaughter stepped down in 1919, the AWH was led and greatly expanded by prominent MWNA member Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, a position she held until her death in 1967. Dr. Lovejoy would also go on to act as MWNA president from 1932-1933 and also helped in the establishment of the Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA) in 1919.

When World War I ended in late 1918, MWNA, through the AWH, continued overseas relief work, aiding the post-war refugee crisis, setting up hospitals and clinics in Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey, France, and beyond, and aiding in European reconstruction. In the United States, MWNA began its legacy of advocating for women’s health issues and helping to widen opportunities for women in medicine. The Medical Service Committee, which grew out of the AWH, explored opportunities for women physicians to act in much-needed service capacities across the United States. As the Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to an economic depression in the 1930s, MWNA directed its service efforts more toward the United States and began attempting to meet the much-needed medical demands of the poor rural communities in areas such as Kentucky and the Carolinas. This involved starting traveling clinics, sending physicians to rural, hard-to-reach areas, and working with the Rockefeller Foundation to attempt to eradicate the parasite hookworm. During the onset of World War II, MWNA, now renamed AMWA as of 1937, renewed its efforts to lobby the War Department to accept women physicians for commission into the military. AMWA eventually succeeded, with the Sparkman Act, signed into law on April 16, 1943, allowing women physicians to serve.

Internationally, the AWH continued to aid the international community in the aftermath of WWII and aided European and Asian refugees and citizens affected by the war and other post-WWII conflicts, such as the Hungarian Revolution. This manifested itself as monetary aid to different groups and direct work. The AWH officially became a separate entity for tax purposes in 1959 and continued to work closely with AMWA until AMWA officially reabsorbed it in 1982.

AMWA realized the vitality of providing opportunities for young medical women in a financial capacity. Since 1925, the AMWA Scholarship Loan Fund has provided loans, scholarships, and financial aid to young women studying medicine. In the post-war era, between the 1950s and 1970s, AMWA began reemphasizing the importance of recruitment and worked with High Schools and Colleges, recruiting young women considering a medical career, offering them financial aid, and active training in medical schools. The financial aid provided by AMWA allowed many young women to study medicine, ushering in new generations of women in medicine.

AMWA pursued this goal by providing more loans and scholarships to aspiring young women in medicine and creating more of an emphasis on the Junior American Women’s Medical Association wing of AMWA. AMWA also focused heavily on building awareness of and training members on the unique challenges faced by women in the medical field, such as raising children while going through medical school or being married to another physician. This focus also began to evolve in the early 1960s with the medical “manpower” shortage, which resulted from post-war population growth, the boom in hospital construction, and a low medical school graduation rate. AMWA responded to this with a political shift away from the individual circumstances holding women physicians back, such as marriage and homemaking, and toward looking at underlying social factors and modes of patriarchal discrimination holding women back. Using this mode of thinking, AMWA played a significant role in advocating for the utilization of women physicians as much as their male counterparts to fill this shortage.

This renewed focus on social reform resulted in a politically liberal push from the 1960s through the 1970s to lobby for women's representation in the medical field. In terms of young women medical students, this included publicizing the discrimination women faced in admission and hiring. AMWA also pushed for more female representation on admission boards and equal opportunity for women medical students and instructors alike. Nationally, AMWA lobbied for better female representation in medicine-based policy-making and advocacy groups, such as the AMA Board of Trustees, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and various United Nations and United States civil service positions. As increasing numbers of women were attending medical schools in the 1970s, AMWA shifted its focus from trying to carve out an enclave for women physicians within a discriminatory, male-dominated field to demanding equality and progression for women in the medical field.

As the rates of women attending medical school exploded through the 1970s and 1980s, AMWA’s membership was flooded with new, young women members, reaching its peak at 13,000 in the 1990s. With this newfound strength, AMWA increased its campaign to lobby for women’s medical issues and general issues in the medical world. AMWA has advocated vocally for issues such as women’s reproductive health, universal access to health care, equality in sex and gender-based medicine, tobacco control, sexual and domestic violence, and awareness for health issues affecting women. As of 2019, AMWA continues to live out its mission of advocating for women in the medical profession and provides leadership and an organized group for women across the field of medicine.

Sources:

Lovejoy, Esther Pohl. Women Physicians and Surgeons: National and International Organizations.

More, Ellen S. PhD. “The American Medical Women’s Association and the role of the woman physician, 1915-1990”. Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, Vol. 45, no. 5, September/October 1990. Pgs. 165-180.

Brodie, Jessie Laird M.D. “Service Unlimited- AMWA”. Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association, Vol 14, no. 7, July 1959. Pgs. 605-612.