An Assessment of Gender Differences in Physician Pay in Three Florida Public Medical Schools

Abstract

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 ensures equal pay for equal work; yet sixty years afterits enactment by Congress, pay equity continues to be a priority for women in academic medicine. Despite comparable pay legislation, gender neutral advocacy, and social change, women earn less than their male counterparts across many occupations. To assess gender differences in physician pay, a quantitative, nonexperimental, causal comparative research study was performed, using publicly available demographic, medical specialty, and compensation data, for physicians in three public medical schools in the State of Florida. The descriptive statistics showed a skewed distribution of adjusted annual salaries by gender with a higher frequency of salaries in the low range. In general, female physicians (M = 242,791) earned less than their male counterparts (M = 314,597). The difference between means was $71,806. Nonparametric testing showed a statistically significant difference in pay between female and male physicians, when grouped by class title or faculty rank, years of experience, and medical specialty of primary board certification in specific subgroup cohorts at each institution. Multiple regression analysis showed that being female associated with a decrease in adjusted annual salary but to a lesser extent than some of the other factors in this study. Given the gendered differences in pay identified in this research study, many of which were statistically significant, a simple, 5-step action plan was proposed as the solution.