Male doctors make $12K more per year than female doctors: study
This is Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil. Credit: University of Michigan Health System
Male doctors make more money than their female counterparts, even when factoring in medical specialty, title, work hours, productivity and a host of other factors, according to a comprehensive new analysis from researchers at the University of Michigan Health System and Duke University.
Results of the study appear in the June 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"The gender pay disparity we found in this highly talented and select group of physicians was sobering," says lead study author Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., associate professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School.
The researchers surveyed 800 physicians who had received a highly competitive early career research grant from the National Institutes of Health in 2000-2003. By focusing on these grants, the researchers narrowed the pool to an extremely select, highly motivated, highly talented group of physicians who are involved in academic medicine. The physicians were surveyed about a decade after receiving these grants, putting them now mid-career.
"People point to a lot of possible reasons for pay disparities, so we examined a population in which you would be least likely to pick up gender differences in salary. After we adjusted for a host of factors that could explain pay differences, we unmasked a pay disparity of $12,001 a year, or more than $350,000 over a career," Jagsi says.
The survey included 39 questions covering age, medical specialty, marital status, work hours, time spent in research, number of peer-reviewed publications, location, race, additional grants, leadership roles and other degrees.
Overall, the average annual salary was $200,422 for men and $167,669 for women, a difference of $32,764. Medical specialty was the biggest driver of salary difference. When the researchers factored that in, the men made $17,874 more. When the researchers adjusted for all factors, the gap was $12,001.
Spreading this out over 30 years, women would earn over $350,000 less than their similar male colleagues by the end of their career.
"To see that men and women doing similar work are paid quite differently in this cream-of-the-crop sample is both surprising and disturbing. I hope these findings will help inform policy discussions on how to address these disparities and ensure equal pay for men and women who are performing equal work," says Jagsi, who is also a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Physician Faculty Scholar.
Senior author Peter Ubel, M.D., professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and its Sanford School of Public Policy, cautions against attributing the salary difference to conscious discrimination.
"For all we know, women are paid less in part because they don't negotiate as assertively as men, or because their spouse's jobs make it harder for them to entertain competing job offers. Nevertheless, whatever the reason for the salary disparity, academic medical centers should work to pay more fairly. A person's salary should not depend upon whether they have a Y chromosome," Ubel says.
The researchers have been awarded a new grant that will allow them to look at whether gender differences in salary were due to initial starting salaries or whether they accumulated over time.
More information: Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 307, No. 22, pp. 2410-2417, June 13, 2012
Journal reference:
Journal of the American Medical Association
Provided by
University of Michigan Health System
-
Even highly qualified women in academic medicine paid less than equally qualified men
Mar 31, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Gender-based pay gaps among US faculty
Nov 10, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Women entering the workforce expect less than men, study finds
May 19, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study reveals the secrets to negotiating a higher salary
Oct 21, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Women researchers less likely to receive major career funding grants, study shows
Nov 30, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
More news stories
Decisions to forgo life support may depend heavily on the ICU where patients are treated
The decision to limit life support in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) appears to be significantly influenced by physician practices and/or the culture of the hospital, suggests new findings from researchers at the ...
Other
5 minutes ago |
not rated yet |
0
People on higher incomes are happier with new knees
Knee replacement surgery is a very common procedure. However, it does not always resolve function or pain in all the recipients of new knees. A study by Robert Barrack, MD and his colleagues from the Washington University ...
Other
2 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
New search engine finds rare diagnoses
Doctors are trained to think "common disease" when they meet patients in their practices, and as they rarely or never meet a rare disease, it often takes many years to reach the right diagnosis. A new search tool called FindZebra ...
Other
2 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Delayed transfer to the ICU increases risk of death in hospital patients
Delayed transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU) in hospitalized patients significantly increases the risk of dying in the hospital, according to a new study from researchers in Chicago.
Other
4 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Free distribution of auditory orientation training system for the visually impaired
Researchers from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and the Research Institute of Electrical Communication (RIEC) of Tohoku University have jointly developed an auditory ...
Other
5 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
B vitamins could delay dementia
(Medical Xpress)—Despite spending billions of dollars on research and development, drug companies have been unable to come up with effective treatments for dementia and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Now, A. ...
Enrichment therapy effective among children with autism, study finds
Children with autism showed significant improvement after six months of simple sensory exercises at home using everyday items such as scents, spoons and sponges, according to UC Irvine neurobiologists.
Poliovirus vaccine trial shows early promise for recurrent glioblastoma
An attack on glioblastoma brain tumor cells that uses a modified poliovirus is showing encouraging results in an early study to establish the proper dose level, researchers at Duke Cancer Institute report.
'Doctor shopping' by obese patients negatively affects health
Overweight and obese patients are significantly more likely than their normal-weight counterparts to repeatedly switch primary care doctors, a practice that disrupts continuity of care and leads to more emergency room visits, ...
Better behavior after tonsil/adenoid surgery for kids with sleep breathing trouble?
Children with obstructive sleep apnea who had a common surgery to remove their tonsils and adenoids showed notable improvements in behavior, quality of life and other symptoms compared to those treated with "watchful waiting" ...
If you can remember it, you can remember it wrong
(Medical Xpress)—Native peoples in regions where cameras are uncommon sometimes react with caution when their picture is taken. The fear that something must have been stolen from them to create the photo ...
Jun 12, 2012
Rank: not rated yet