In 1944, Dr. Dorothy Segal was one of only 55 female veterinarians practicing in the U.S.
When Dr. Dorothy Segal enrolled in the Michigan State University preveterinary program in the 1930s, she had already overcome some challenges—a car crash delayed her planned entrance into college by almost six years—but it quickly became clear that there would be other hurdles in front of Dorothy and the other young women in her class.
“There were seven girls in my class, and that was considered to be just an enormous amount (of women in veterinary school),” said Dr. Segal, now age 90. “The dean at the time did not want women. He said, ‘Go back to the kitchen.’ He literally said that. The first speech he gave was, ‘What are you doing here?’ and he was not joking. I thought to myself, I’m going to make friends with that man if it kills me. … Ultimately, we really became friends.”
If Dr. Segal and her classmates were trailblazers, then the trail is officially open—wide open. Today, women outnumber men in veterinary classes by more than 3-to-1, and approximately 61 percent of U.S. veterinarians are women.*
*Source: American Veterinary Medical Association
