Women who chair clinical departments at public medical schools earn only 88 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make, averaging about $70,000 to $80,000 less per year, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and UC San Francisco report.
Eleni LinosAcademic productivity, specialization and years on the job do not explain the disparity, the report added.
“When you adjust for all these factors, you still see a pay gap,” said Eleni Linos, MD, MPH and professor of dermatology at Stanford. “This calls into question the common explanations for gender disparities and highlights a pervasive structural problem that needs to be addressed. Women are regularly paid less than men, even at the highest levels of academic medicine.”
Published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine, the study surveyed the salary information of 550 chairs of clinical departments (one-sixth of which were held by women) from 29 public medical schools in 12 states.
