By Carrie R. Swigart, MD

Yesterday was International Women’s Day and this month Perspectives has asked for submissions highlighting women who have inspired us and impacted our careers. I’ve given this quite a bit of thought. I’ve mentally retraced the key decision points of my training and career, and I’ve come to what some may find to be a surprising conclusion. My life as a hand surgeon was not shaped or influenced by women but rather by men. I graduated from medical school in 1991. I chose orthopaedic surgery as a future career having never met a female orthopaedic surgeon. There were a few other women on the interview trail, but at that time we were a very small minority. I did not think of myself as a trailblazer then, nor do I now. 

And so, I’d like to recognize some of the men who have shaped my career and helped me get where I am today. The first is my father. I grew up with a “traditional” family dynamic. My father, an attorney, was the sole breadwinner and my mother did not work outside the home. It was a small town in central Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, I never once felt that ANY career choice was out of bounds for me. It was expected that I would go to college, but otherwise the choices were all mine. My father intervened only once, but at an important moment. When all the mail was coming addressed to me from various colleges in my junior year of high school, he pulled one of them out of the trash where I had put it. It was the Wellesley College brochure. I don’t remember the exact reasons I had discarded it, but it was probably a combination of things including it being located far away in Massachusetts and being an all-women’s college. He pulled that brochure from the trash and encouraged me to look further; to aim higher. 

I went to Wellesley College and then to Penn Medical School. Twelve of my class at Penn went into orthopaedics; I was the only woman. There were several orthopaedic surgeons at Penn who made me feel welcome and accepted as “one of them.” Drs. Joe Torg, Denis Drummond, and Fred Kaplan stand out as wonderful teachers. I did a sub-internship at Yale during my fourth year and found there a unique place. Under the early leadership of Dr. Wayne Southwick, Yale had become a place where there was unquestioned acceptance of diversity. It was no surprise to me that Dr. Southwick was the first recipient of the AAOS Diversity Award in 2003. I was lucky enough to have known him at the end of his career. I have never met anyone more gender and color blind in the truest sense of that idea. Dr. Gary Friedleander was the chair when I went to Yale and he continued to encourage and nurture the culture of diversity at Yale. I can best describe how it was different by saying that after training at Yale I was not a female orthopaedic surgeon but an orthopaedic surgeon who was female. 

I realize in writing this that I may be missing the mark with this piece as it may not be seen to be celebrating women. But I think it is important to remember that men can also inspire, encourage, and support women. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.