National Women Physicians Day: Perspectives From Riley Bove, MD

National Women Physician’s Day falls on February 3 each year and serves as an opportunity to honor the pioneering achievements and ongoing contributions of women physicians across medicine. The date was selected as a tribute to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. Born on February 3, 1821, Blackwell would eventually earn her degree in 1849 from Geneva Medical College in New York and pave the way for future generations of women in the field. National Women Physician’s Day acknowledges the vital roles that female physicians play in patient care, medical research and leadership within the health care field.¹

Prominent neurologist and scientist Riley Bove, MD, MS, a leader in the study of sex and gender aspect of Neurology, is among those who continue to follow in Blackwell’s footsteps. A Harvard Medical School graduate, Bove sees patients in the UCSF Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroinflammation Center and has published extensively on how various neurological diseases uniquely affect women’s health. Additionally, she is the founder of the Sex and Gender Equality (SAGE) Neurology Program at UCSF, which aims to provide sex- and gender-informed clinical care while advancing, educations and research efforts in the field.

In a new feature, NeurologyLive^® sat down with Bove for an exclusive interview, where she reflected on the personal and professional significance of National Women Physician’s Day, emphasizing both the barriers women have faced in medicine and the vital contributions they continue to make to science, clinical care, and patient advocacy. She discusses the systemic changes that have driven growth in women’s health within MS care and research, including increased representation of women in leadership, patient-driven demand for specialized care, and greater recognition from industry and funding bodies. Furthermore, Bove highlighted major progress areas such as pregnancy and postpartum care, perimenopause and aging in MS, and the need for comprehensive, sex-specific research.

NeurologyLive: What does National Women Physician’s Day mean to you personally, and how would you describe its importance for other women in the field?

Bove: It means a couple of different things. As a woman who trained to be a physician, we’ve faced a lot of opportunities and barriers in our training. National Women Physician’s Day is a good day to take stock of those two, look at what has changed, and look at how we can continue to break down some of those barriers.

It also means recognizing the contributions that women physicians have made. That may mean contributions to science, medical knowledge, or medical practice. It also can mean the contributions that they’ve made based on their attention to specific unmet patient needs.

In general, there has been massive underfunding of research into women’s health. There’s been lack of scientific attention to it and in the clinic, there’s also been a tendency to disregard—we sort of use the term gaslight—the unique needs of female patients and women patients. National Women Physician’s Day is also a good opportunity to reflect on how having a more balanced medical workforce also translates into more balanced medical care and medical knowledge.

From your perspective, what factors have contributed to driving the growth of women’s health in MS care and research?

I would say 5 to 10 ten years ago in the MS field, there was really a reckoning by senior women physicians who said, ‘look, we’re now present in substantial numbers.’ Yet if you look at all the authorship for all the important pivotal phase three clinical trials, women are basically not represented in first or last author positions, despite the scientific, intellectual, person-power, or clinical contributions to the science. It’s time for that to change.

Women are not visible in scientific meetings, on panels, as leadership. Through innovations like the International Women in MS Group amongst others, there was a concerted effort to improve the visibility and really advancement of women in the MS workforce.  There has also been increasing patient requests for advances and change. There are now increasing numbers of women patients who are educated customers, consumers, and patients who have agency, voice, power, and who ask to have their needs met in the areas of diagnosis, comprehensive care, pregnancy, and menopause management. We have women who are now increasingly asking that their doctors have expertise to take care of them.

We’ve also seen the pharmaceutical industry take note of the fact that MS affects three times more women than men, and the increasing number of women in the ranks of scientists and prescriber physicians. We’ve seen pharmaceutical companies really start to take more seriously their voices, perspectives, agendas, and careers of women physicians.

We’ve also seen people in decision-making roles, people who review grants, allocate funding, or decide on the merits of a clinical question or science or a clinical paper in a journal, start to really understand that they need to consider fairness with respect to scientist representation. They also consider being fair to balancing the themes and the needs of clinical care that addresses the needs of women. I think we’ve seen an increase in the representation of women in the roles of physicians, the prescribers, the scientists, the funders, the conference organizers. We’ve seen patients start really requesting what they deserve.

What are some key breakthroughs or progress areas you’ve seen in women’s health and MS?

I would say there has been increasing attention to pregnancy and MS over the past maybe 15 years. We’ve really seen pharma companies take pregnancy seriously in the last 5 years and shift from avoidance with respect to their products and pregnancy. Postpartum is the state in which women are at the highest risk of new brain lesions. About 50% of them have new brain lesions postpartum, and it’s absolutely unethical to leave them untreated and unmanaged.

We’ve seen pharma companies really understand this and shift into putting scientific research and research dollars into understanding potential placental transfer and potential breast milk transfer of their product so that we have better information to guide our patients. When I started advocating for this eight years ago, there was very little enthusiasm for this. Now, companies are doing this pretty much across the board.

There also seems to be a shift around understanding the relevance of perimenopause and postmenopausal aging in women. Half of people living with MS are older than 50, so perimenopause and menopausal lifespan are very relevant. We’re finally starting to see some pockets of investment and recognition, with researchers beginning to fill important gaps.

What roles do clinicians and patients play in shaping women-focused MS research?

It’s important that clinicians have the tools to hear the concerns, spoken or unspoken, of their patients. One hurdle is gender-discordant care. If you have mostly men as physicians and women as patients, there may be predictable gaps in communication. We often call this gaslighting, but that implies malicious intent. It’s mostly a lack of training in communication, in gender-discordant communication. That is something we can absolutely address in medical training and fellowship. With a diversifying workforce, we’re asking: what women’s voices have we been missing? And what do we need to do to make sure we hear everybody?

What areas of women’s health need to be studied further?

We need to continue understanding how to target the needs of perimenopausal women, improve their quality of life, and set them up for healthy aging. We also have to think about drug safety in sex-specific ways. Finally, the need to capture all the voices of our different patients—not just women, but men too.

Final thoughts on National Women Physician’s Day or the field in general?

Healthier women mean healthier families and these decisions affect the health of the entire family unit. When we bring a more balanced workforce to the table, we can meet the needs of all our patients and communities. It is a day to celebrate and reflect, and to think about how we can continue addressing gaps in healthcare for all.

REFERENCES
1. National Women Physicians Day information. American Medical Association. October 25, 2023. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://www.ama-assn.org/member-groups-sections/women-physicians-section-wps/national-women-physicians-day-information