Female physicians at some of the foremost public medical schools in the country make much less each year than male physicians, according to a new study. Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers found that – even after adjusting for factors likely to influence income – women physicians earn an average of $20,000 per year less than men.
The results were published July 11 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The National Institutes of Health funded the research.
The researchers say the study is probably the largest one to date of salary differences between male and female medical school faculty members.
They relied on the Freedom of Information laws that mandate release of salary information of public university employees in several states. The study analyzed differences in academic physician salary between men and women among 10,241 physicians in 24 public medical schools.
The factors that might come into play to create the disparity, researchers note, could be childrearing, work-life preferences and inequitable allocation of funds and space.
Another factor that might come into play in the disparity, researchers suggest, is the possibility that women physicians may place less emphasis on salary negotiations compared with male counterparts in both initial and subsequent salary negotiations.
The disparity in pay between female and male doctors closely parallels what the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society found in its December 2015 compensation survey of men and women professionals in the healthcare information technology field. There, the gap in pay was nearly $26,000 – $126,262 on average for men compared with $100,762 for women.
[Also: HIMSS compensation survey: Big salary gap between men, women healthcare pros]
The MGH and Harvard research point to factors contributing to pay disparity that may be hard to unravel.
"More than raising attention to salary sex differences in medicine, our findings highlight the fact that these differences persist even when we account for detailed factors that influence income and reflect academic productivity," lead author Anupam Jena, MD, of the MGH Department of Medicine and the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy said in a statement.
The research suggests factors such as women physicians being less likely to receive positive recognition, more likely to be discriminated against, "and the possibility that women physicians may place less emphasis on salary negotiations compared with male counterparts in both initial and subsequent salary negotiations."
Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com
