Wage gap between men and women in medicine mirrors other professions
While women now account for half of the applicants to medical schools, many women physicians earn less than their male counterparts in the same jobs, said Dr. Deborah Allen, professor of family medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. “All working women experience this,” Allen said. “We have a glass-ceiling effect in medicine too. We reflect society in general. There aren’t many women CEOs, and it transfers into medicine.” Female physicians’ wages average 63 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues, according to a June 2004 U.S. Census Bureau report. However, the disparity can seem “very subtle,” Allen said. “I guarantee that if you ask women faculty members in medical schools if they thought they were being paid the same as their male partners, they would say yes. It doesn’t come out until you delve into the specifics.” Sometimes getting the full picture about compensation is challenging. The wage disparities between male and female physicians could be the result of women working part-time or limited hours or choosing lower-paid practice specialties like family medicine or pediatrics to allow more time off to raise children. That’s the word from “Women in Medicine: Career and Life Management,” a book Allen co-wrote with Drs. Marjorie Bowman and Erica Frank. But in an editorial in the August 2004 Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers found that “even after accounting for specialty, hours worked and many other measures of productivity and achievement, women learned less than their male colleagues.” It will take societal change for women in all professions to earn the same compensation as males, Allen said. • Allen
