So Why do Female Physicians Earn Lower than the Males

And this fact exists despite studies like these that show that Women physicians are better than male docs at providing cardiac (Heart) care like blood pressure & Cholesterol control !

Recently a team of researchers working with William B. Weeks, M.D., M.B.A. and Amy E. Wallace, M.D., M.P.H, published a series of article studying the influence of gender and race on annual physician incomes in America, using 1998 data.

The study consistently found that the income of women doctors was 15 to 25 % lower than the male counterparts in almost all specialties, specifically, Anesthesiology, Psychiatry, General Surgery, Family Medicine, Emergency Medicine, ....Yeah - go fetch them on pubmed :-)

I was thinking that maybe at least the female pediatricians and gynecologists would make more than the men - but naah !

Here are some reasons that can be derived from all those studies about Lower Female Physician Compensation:

1. Women docs tend to work fewer hours than the men and giver greater importance to home and kids than the men. However the same family-minded reason also contributes to making women physicians more stable employees, i.e. lower turnover rates when compared with men. Read the AMA article Gender, Age Factors in Physician Retention. A research study reported in the Journal of Human Resources (2005;40:477-504) reveals that Married women doctors in the United States earn 11% less than men and unmarried women without children - and that drops by 14% with one child and 22% with another kid !

2. Women even tend to work few years (lower physician career span) than the men

3. They tend to be less financially ambitious and find greater satisfaction from being able to practice as a doc than the males, while the men are more likely to dream about being partners in a practice than be on a regular payroll.

4. Like I have iterated a million times on this blog, procedural specialties pay more than the non-procedural or cognitive specialties and the women tend to prefer cognitive specialties like endocrinology while there are lot many males in the procedural specialties like orthopedics and surgery - put the two together, and thats another reason male physicians make more.


And What's more, when compared with the income gap from the 1980s, the gender-income gap seems to be widening.

I came across this article that argues having too many women docs was not good for the US, since we needed more physician-work hours and longer doc career-spans due to the MD shortage ! LOL (Shall try to search for the link to the article and post it here if I find it) . Well .......how about making physician work hours, system changes and entry barriers to the MD profession easier instead of such a radical view ?


So, what if all the above reasons are removed and we compare hourly pays for a male and a female physician with the same credentials and specialty at a given location ? There should not be a difference ! Like the article "Women paid less than men is not necessarily discrimination" says:

"It's not about gender, it's time on task and productivity. Correct for that, I told her, and the pay system is gender blind. In fact, several women doctors are paid well above the average and, not uncommonly, more than their male counterparts"


Well, it's not just the world of doctors that sees this difference. A study by an economics dude at Vanderbilt - Malcolm Getz - used the US Census 1996-2002 data to find that accounting, insurance, finance and marketing showed the biggest income gaps. You might wanna read the entire news article posted on Management-issues.com which argues that "Almost half the managers in U.S. companies are women. Yet when it comes to the most senior posts, men outnumber the women by almost six to one, while at all levels, women consistently earn less than men"


Also Read:

- Top reasons why MDs switch their jobs in usa

Nice Books:

- Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
- The Survival Bible for Women in Medicine



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