The female head of Britain's foremost royal medical college has warned that the medical profession could lose power and status because of the increasing number of successful women doctors.

Carol Black, the president of the Royal College of Physicians, said Britain's doctors risked ending up like their Russian counterparts, who she said were ignored by their government and had lost influence as a body.

"We are feminising medicine," Professor Black told the Independent newspaper. "It has been a profession dominated by white males. What are we going to do to ensure it retains its influence? In Russia, medicine is an almost entirely female profession ... they have lost influence as a body that had competency, skills and a professional ethic. They have become just another part of the workforce. It is a case of downgrading professionalism."

Her comments come at a time when more than 60% of new doctors are female, and women make up the majority of the junior medical workforce. She said she would like to see action taken to equalise the number of male and female doctors.

Women doctors were as good as, and sometimes better than, male colleagues, she said, but they often chose specialities that involved shorter working hours because of family pressures. "They choose to go into dermatology, geriatrics and palliative care - not cardiology and gastroenterology where they would be required to work long hours.

What worries me is, who is going to be the professor of cardiology in the future? Where are we going to find the leaders of British medicine in 20 years' time?"

If women were not enabled to participate fully, the profession would lose its influence, she said. "It worries me if we don't make it possible for women to do all the things we expect a doctor to do to be at the top of the profession."