Report Finds a Large Gender Pay Gap for Physician Faculty Members at State-Operated Medical Schools

A new study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, published on the website of the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, finds that on average women faculty members at large state-operated medical schools earn about $51,000 less than their male peers. But when researchers controlled for various factors including age, experience, faculty rank, the number of patients seen, publication history, and a host of other variables, they still found a gender gap in pay of nearly $20,000.

Using public data on salaries of 10,000 physician faculty members at 24 state-operated medical schools, the authors found that “sex differences in salary varied across specialties, institutions, and faculty ranks. For example, adjusted salaries of female full professors were comparable to those of male associate professors.”

The gender pay gap was the largest for neurosurgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons and orthopedic surgeons with smaller gaps for physicians specializing in infectious disease, family medicine, and neurology. The results showed that women radiologists actually earned more on average than men radiologists.

The full study, “Sex Differences in Physician Salary in US Public Medical Schools,” may be accessed here. The three authors of the study are all men.