Compared to their male peers, women physicians working full-time in the United States earn about 78 cents on the dollar in total compensation and roughly 80 cents on the dollar in base salary, according to an analysis from Marit Health.
Gender differences in speciality choice among doctors is single largest factor associated with the pay gap. Women are underrepresented in the most lucrative specialities, such as neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, cardiology, and radiology, and overrepresented in less lucrative fields, such as family medicine, genetics, endocrinology, and obstetrics and gynecology.
However, even within specialities, women still make less than men. The specialties with the largest gender pay gaps are infectious disease (24.3 percent), allergy and immunology (23.1 percent), and pulmonology (22.8 percent). In contrast, the only areas where women physicians earn more than their male counterparts are preventative medicine (4.8 percent) and pathology (1.2 percent).
Over the course of a 30-year career, a woman physician can expect to earn some $3.3 million less in total compensation than a male colleague. After controlling for factors such as speciality, employer, location, and hours worked, women physicians still have a lifetime earnings difference of $907,000 less than their male peers.
The gender pay gap in medicine exists in nearly every U.S. state, with the widest gaps found in Kansas (39 percent), Idaho (38 percent), and Delaware (36 percent). The states that are closest to closing their gender pay gaps in medicine are Maine (7 percent), Nebraska (8 percent), and Colorado (10 percent).
Women physicians are also underrepresented in smaller towns and rural areas, where physicians overall report the highest median total compensation. Additionally, women are overrepresented at lower-paying employers, such as nonprofits, public sector organizations, and academic settings.
Outside of base pay disparities, women in medicine are less likely than their male peers to receive bonuses, despite no statistically significant differences between women and men working longer shifts, night shifts, or weekend shifts. Women physicians also receive lower average signing bonuses than men.
“We do not believe that employers set out to pay female physicians less than their male peers. There is no evidence of deliberate discrimination driving these disparities,” according to the report authors. “Instead, the gap emerges from the accumulation of many smaller factors: implicit gender biases hidden within how we value (and pay for) physician work, historical compensation benchmarks that carry forward prior inequities, specialty pipelines that have been male-dominated for decades, and benefits structures that inadvertently penalize caregiving responsibilities. Each factor on its own may seem minor. Together, they compound into a significant and persistent disparity.”