Women physicians make about 77 cents on the dollar compared with their male colleagues, which translates to between $0.9 million and $2.5 million in lost career earnings over their lifetime.
Worse, women in primary care earn 19% less than their male colleagues (down from 25%), per the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2023. In fact, women in primary care make the least of all physicians, despite the fact that some studies show that they often outperform male doctors across several metrics.
"Early on there was this cultural narrative that there is no gender pay gap; it's just that women work part-time," said Amy S. Gottlieb, MD, chief faculty development officer, associate dean for faculty affairs, and professor of medicine and obstetrics & gynecology at UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate.
"But it's not true. Most studies that look at the gender pay gap now control for the number of hours worked," said Gottlieb, chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Women in Medicine and Science Steering Committee and the author of Closing the Gender Pay Gap in Medicine: A Roadmap for Healthcare Organizations and the Women Physicians Who Work for Them.
Why Are Women Paid Less?
Gottlieb said that compensation models, typically based on RVUs (relative value units) for employed physicians, have some flaws that inadvertently lower women's pay.
