Frances K. Conley

Conley attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She returned to Stanford in her junior year and entered medical school there in 1961, where she was one of twelve women in a class with sixty men. During this time Conley observed the differences in the way male and female students were treated and noticed that male physiology was used to define what was "normal" in medical models.

In 1966 she completed her M.D. That same year she became the first woman to start a rotating surgical internship at Stanford University Hospital. There she completed her residency in neurological surgery in 1975. In 1977, she became the fifth woman to be certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery.

Since Dr. Conley was one of the few female neurosurgeons she often experienced sexism in the hospital environment. In 1991, she made national headlines when she announced her intention to resign her tenured position as professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University Medical School in protest against the sexist attitudes of male colleagues who had recently been promoted. In an interview with Time magazine she said, "this is a pervasive, global problem from women who are trying to get into professional careers." Because of this, women around the country reported similar problems, including men calling women physicians "honey" rather than "doctor," or groping them after they had scrubbed for surgery and couldn't use their hands to resist. Soon after she had announced her intention to resign, Stanford adopted policies to deal with gender insensitivity. Dr. Conley withdrew her resignation and continued her career in teaching and clinical research at Stanford.

Info from: http://www.neurosurgerywins.org/spotlight/conley_frances_k.html