A Gender Salary Gap Persists for Faculty in Some Internal Medicine Disciplines

A new study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University finds that women make up more than 40 percent of all full-time faculty teaching internal medicine at U.S. medical schools, but are a far lower percentage in pulmonology, gastroenterology, and cardiology specialties that tend to have higher salaries. The analysis examined median annual salary, faculty rank and gender for nearly 22,000 academic faculty across 13 internal medicine subspecialties.

The study found that medical specialties with greater female representation were consistently those in which all physicians had lower salaries. For those medical faculty in pulmonology, gastroenterology, and cardiology specialties women’s salaries were less than 90 percent of men’s salaries in these fields. The widest pay discrepancy of 21 percent was in the field of cardiology.

The full study, “Gender Gaps in Salary and Representation in Academic Internal Medicine Specialties in the US,” was published on the website of JAMA Internal Medicine. It may be accessed here.