Forty years ago, as a wide-eyed vet wannabe cleaning cages and scooping poop, the veterinary world smelled like overflowing ashtrays, off-brand Pine Sol, and halothane gas. The profession was a man's game, for sure. White coats and neckties were still the go-to in most high-end practices. If you were very lucky, you'd see the lone young woman in comfortable shoes trying very hard to prove herself.

Where I worked, the dress code was as relaxed as the peeling linoleum floors and the unapologetically masculine rules. Castrating a back-alley tom barehanded wasn't out of the question, and nary an employee batted an eye at a glove-less necropsy. "Why would you waste 'em? He's dead, ain't he?" Moreover, "manhandling" isn't called that for nothing. Fear Free was miles away in the 1970s.

From Marlboro Men to Barbie pink

Fast forward to today, and vet med looks like someone let Barbie design the profession: patterned scrubs, sparkly stethoscopes, TikTok dances in the break room. Somewhere between the Marlboro Man and Taylor Swift, the gender balance did a full somersault. While the feminization of veterinary medicine has brought plenty of good things, it's also created some challenges we really need to talk about:

Prior to the 1980s, upwards of 90 percent of U.S. veterinarians were male. Women were either discouraged outright as being too fragile for the rigors of the large animal work and/or less suited to the sciences in general. Then Title IX hit in 1972, opening the floodgates for women in professional schools. By the 1980s, women started flooding into vet med programs. Admissions committees realized women were not only applying en masse but even outperforming the men academically.

Today, about 80 percent of veterinary students in North America are women (by the American Veterinary Medical Association's metrics 83 percent of the class of 2027 are women), and the profession itself is hovering around 65–70 percent female (and climbing). We're the U.S.'s current poster child of gender-flipping professions.

We're not alone

Veterinary medicine isn't alone in its pink-ification. Just ask human medicine's pediatricians, OB/GYNs, or family medicine practitioners—fields that have gone majority female in the past few decades. Same goes for family law, teaching, pharmacy, and psychology. When was the last time you heard of a male primary school teacher? How many young male pharmacists do you know? Who was your divorce lawyer?

The pattern is clear: once a profession tips past 50 percent women, men start peeling away in droves. Whether that's because of pay stagnation, status shifts, or cultural branding (i.e., teaching equals nurturing, nurturing equals women), the end result is the same.

Veterinary medicine followed the script perfectly: rising tuition, stagnant salaries, ballooning debt, long hours, high burnout, and lower prestige relative to human medicine and law. Voilá—you have a perfect recipe for a female-majority profession.

What that means for vet med

On the upside, the feminization of the field has made it more empathetic, more collaborative, and more communicative. Clients often praise female veterinarians for their listening skills, their thoroughness, and their compassion. Research backs this up: women vets spend more time in appointments, score higher on client satisfaction, and build stronger long-term bonds with pet owners.¹

However, there are also downsides. With fewer men entering, diversity of thought and approach shrinks. Stereotypes harden: "veterinary medicine is for women," which can discourage talented men who might otherwise thrive alongside us. What's perhaps more telling, despite disproportionally higher spending in veterinary medicine over the past 20 years, the pay gap between human physicians and veterinarians hasn't budged.

The truth is, feminized professions historically struggle to regain wage growth once they tip pink. Then there's the burnout crisis: the profession is hemorrhaging talent at a terrifying rate, and gender homogeneity isn't helping us any in this respect. (I won't belabor the reasons why this might be the case but I'm sure you can all make a few educated guesses why we may lose women more readily than men.)

Corporatization loves pink

Enter the corporate behemoths—the entire alphabet soup of consolidators. Corporate veterinary medicine thrives in a workforce that's overwhelmingly female because it aligns neatly with stereotypical traits: risk-averse, team-oriented, financially cautious.

Corporates know this. They offer what seem like safe salaried positions, purport to offer work-life balance, promote maternity leave, and offer structured career ladders (for those who happen to love the taste of Kool-Aid). Since women are still carrying a disproportionate amount of household responsibilities, it looks like a pretty awesome deal.

However, corporatization also means fewer owners, less independence, and a diminished entrepreneurial drive overall (it's harder to compete when corporations own more than 75 percent of your town). Historically, men were more likely to hang a shingle, take on business risk, and grow practices. (Unfortunately, their household roles still favor this paradigm.) When ownership shifts to corporations, however, veterinarians (of any gender) lose more autonomy.

The feminization of our profession didn't cause corporatization, but the overlap is too convenient to ignore. Of all the big players out there, they stand to gain the most from this shift. After all, we women are apparently more willing to do more of the heavy lifting for less than what we're really worth.

Why we need more men (yes, really)

Lest there be any confusion, let's be clear: this isn't about suggesting men are any better at being veterinarians than we women are. That's in no way what I'm arguing. Rather, it's about balance.

Professions thrive when they reflect a mix of strengths, personalities, and approaches. Men often bring different communication styles, leadership dynamics, and risk tolerance that complement the contributions of women. Our clients notice, too. Some feel more comfortable with male vets—at least in certain situations. Others simply value the diverse points of view and see the presence of male vets on our teams as an asset.

Diversity isn't just a buzzword. It's a strategy for resilience. A more gender-balanced profession would have more varied leadership, more perspectives in decision-making, and more credibility with the public, and maybe, just maybe, pay scales wouldn't have stagnated quite so dramatically if the profession hadn't gone majority female quite so quickly.

Show me the money

It starts with the economics. If we want more men, we need to make the profession competitive with engineering, medicine, or business with respect to opportunity and pay.

Right now, a prospective vet student comparing a career in radiology or finance with ours is going to make a cold, hard calculation when factoring in the $200K-$300K debt they'll be saddled with. Spoiler alert: our profession loses almost every single time.

Why branding matters

Yes, branding. At the moment, our profession's public face is overwhelmingly pink- and cute-centric. Our veterinary influencers on TikTok cuddle kittens and kiss puppies. While they're not wrong to want to appeal to the mass market, it's not exactly telling truths about what we do, and it's certainly not attractive to boys. For that, we need more vets engaging visibly in the trench warfare we experience.

How about those of us working with dangerous exotics or fractious farm animals? We're on TV, but our experience there seems singular and somewhat sanitized, too. We need to more routinely showcase our grit, our problem-solving skills, the science that underpins our work, and, of course, let's not skimp on the blood-and-guts heroics. We need kittens covered in ringworm lesions and pups with cleft palates, not just the perfectly adorable ones.

So men in the profession…Where are your Insta posts and TikTok reels? I see some of you out there flexing your biceps for the camera (and for the ladies). Can't you do more? Some of you already do. Let's see more of that. As for all you women out there on the socials…start promoting the men with the most to offer other men, not just the ones that directly appeal to you.

Mentorship and recruiting

Male veterinarians should be encouraged to mentor and help recruit. If we want balance, we need role models showing both boys and girls that veterinary medicine is intellectually demanding, emotionally rewarding, and broad enough to welcome all genders and personalities.

How about our vet schools start doing more to recruit men where they are? We need more large animal vets, right? Start targeting your efforts a little better. Brand yourselves better. Offer scholarships for men. Find more companies willing to pave the way for more men.

Here's an idea: Relax some of your rigid standards on time spent directly working with veterinarians. After all, fewer male vets means fewer opportunities for young men to see themselves in practice (and want to volunteer), and fewer large animal vets is equally self-perpetuating. (It's almost impossible to find ride-along work in large animal medicine.)

Why balance makes sense

Imagine a profession where both men and women are more equally represented in clinics, classrooms, and boardrooms. Leadership isn't skewed, mentorship pipelines are richer, and the workforce feels broader.

Plus, if a more diverse group of graduates means more veterinarians electing practice ownership, corporate practices would feel the difference. Don't we all want them to feel our might? Respect our autonomy? See that we have choices? It'll help level the playing field, for sure.

Patients and clients would benefit, too. Offering choice makes the profession stronger and the client experience more personalized. We all know it's true: Some clients won't take advice from women the same way they would from men. Within the profession, gender balance might even help alleviate burnout: With more diverse problem-solving approaches, team dynamics improve, and everyone's burden gets lifted.

Veterinary medicine has come a long way from its Marlboro Man roots. The pink revolution has been good for pets and clients in countless ways—but if we want a resilient, healthy profession, we need more than a few good men back in the mix. Not because women aren't enough, but because balance always makes us better. After all, the future of vet med shouldn't be either all cowboy or all Barbie. It should be both—and then some.

Patty Khuly, VMD, MBA, runs a small animal practice in Miami and is available at drpattykhuly.com. Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect those of VPN Plus+.

Reference

JAVMA 2012; https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/241/1/javma.241.1.81.xml