Published 1/30/2026
Despite the rising number of female medical students, Maxwell V. Phillips and colleagues from Kettering University presented a study at the AAOS 2025 Annual Meeting revealing that the rate of female representation in orthopaedics has increased at a statistically significantly lower rate compared to other medical specialties. However, the study found that some regions, including the Pacific West and South Atlantic, showed notable growth in the number of practicing female orthopaedic surgeons.
According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, the percentage of female orthopaedic residents has gradually increased from 0.6% in 1970 to 20.3% in 2023. While this study demonstrates a national increase in the percentage of female orthopaedic surgeons entering the workforce from 2018 to 2023 — a trend that is anticipated to continue in the future — this growth remains slower compared to other surgical specialties. It also highlights the need for additional efforts to recruit female talent to orthopaedics.
The retrospective review used data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) database to examine the number of practicing female orthopaedic Medicare providers and patient caseloads. The number of practicing orthopaedic surgeons in the data set averaged 23,682 annually across the six-year period. The CMS data was also queried to identify surgical and non-surgical medical specialties including general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine and family medicine, and urology and anesthesiology for comparison.
Highlights of the findings include:
- The mean percentage of female orthopaedic surgeons across all states was 6.02% in 2018 and demonstrated subsequent annual increases up to 7.51% in 2023, with an overall increase of 1.49 percentage points over the six-year period. This value was, statistically, significantly lower when compared to female growth in other surgical specialties such as general surgery (up 5.50 percentage points) and obstetrics and gynecology (up 6.93 points).
- Percentages of female orthopaedic CMS providers also varied by state, ranging from 0.0% in Alaska to 16.5% in Hawaii in the 2023 data set. Analysis of geographical trends revealed a 14% and 23% increase, respectively, in female orthopaedic representation in the Pacific West and South Atlantic regions from 2018 to 2023. These regions demonstrated the highest growth rates for all female 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 2,264 in 2018 to a peak of 2,424 in 2022.
- Limitations of the study highlight that information was restricted to CMS providers, which does not capture all orthopaedic surgeons practicing in the United States. However, this population represents a large proportion of orthopaedic surgeons. It presents a “worst-case” scenario, as previous studies have suggested that gender disparity may be higher in orthopaedic arthroplasty specialists than other orthopaedic subspecialties.
By revealing a modest but persistent rise in female orthopaedic surgeons, this study underscores the importance of sustained initiatives to close the gender gap in the specialty.