A huge salary analysis by Harvard and MGH finds female doctors earn less
A recent study by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School found that female physicians earn less than their male colleagues.
Even female doctors working at some of the nation’s most prominent public medical schools cannot escape the gender wage gap, a new study by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School found.
The massive analysis, which included data on roughly 10,000 physician faculty members at 24 medical schools, found that female physicians earn 8 percent less (about $20,000 less per year on average) than male physicians, even after adjusting for differences due to age, faculty rank, university affiliation, and specialty.
That works out to a salary of about $227,783 for women, compared to $247,661 for men.
Before adjusting for factors that could influence income, however, the difference between genders was more than $51,000 a year, or $206,641 for women verses an average salary of $257,947 for their male colleagues.
“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 Dr. Anupam Jena of the MGH Department of Medicine and the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy said in a statement.
Related Links
The findings, supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, were published online in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine this week.
Researchers used data for physicians at publicly-affiliated medical schools because the salary information was easily accessible, and took data from a Doximity database (a networking service for physicians) that showed physician salary information.
The study also showed slight differences among specialties, the Boston Business Journal points out.
For example, while female physicians earned far less than male physicians in orthopedic surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, and cardiology, female physicians in emergency medicine earned about the same as male colleagues in the same field, and women in radiology earned slightly higher — about $2,000 more — than their male colleagues.
Though the study pertains to public medical schools, the researchers said the findings would probably be similar for private hospitals and medical schools because the sex distribution of physicians in the public medical schools studied was nearly identical to all other medical schools in the U.S. not included in the study.
Dr. Anupam B. Jena, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, told The New York Times two factors other than gender bias may play a role in the gender wage gap in medicine — though he did say he saw cases of “clear discrimination” by department chairs in salary settings.
Men and women may negotiate differently, he said, and “male physicians may be more aggressive in terms of obtaining outside salary offers.”
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com