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Sure. I'm not sure what this has to do with changes in the percentage of physicians who were women from 1983 to 2002, though. I would have thought that physical strength would have become more or less a non-issue with the widespread use of anesthetics, which as best I can determine from some very cursory Web searching happened in the 19th century.

Careful with the generalizations, please:

How do you explain, then, three women in my parents' generation (born in the 1920s-1930s), raised "out in the country" with a single parent who made his living raising cattle, and who chose "women's work" jobs (two schoolteachers and a nurse)?

How do you explain me, a city girl for sure, ending up in a field that seems to currently be considered "men's work"?

(All four examples actually probably have a lot to do with what the women in question were raised to think they could-should do, and in one case with what feminists were saying in the 1970s. But they do seem like counterexamples to your generalizations.)

-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.