Married women doctors in the United States earn 11% less than men and unmarried women without children, according to research reported in the Journal of Human Resources (2005;40:477-504). They earn another 14% less if they have one child and 22% less if they have more than one child.
The research, which was carried out by a team from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and based on the American Medical Association’s young physicians survey, a nationally representative sample of US doctors aged under 40, looked at how much of the earnings gap between men and women doctors is due to women’s greater family responsibilities.
Changes over time in men’s and women’s incomes were compared with marital status and numbers of children. The study also included data on specialties, type of job chosen, and hours worked.
The results show that married women earn less than other women. It also shows that they opt for specialties which allow more time for family responsibilities.
"After controlling for demographic and professional characteristics, as well as specialty and practice setting, women physicians exhibit an annual earnings gap of 11% for being married and additional gaps of 14% for having one child and 22% for having two or more children," say the report.
The report says that it is the reduction in hours resulting from the constraints of family responsibilities, rather than discrimination, that is responsible for the gap in income. "The evidence suggests that employer discrimination is not the driving force behind the different returns men and women physicians with family responsibilities receive in the labour market," it says.
"Women physicians with children do not appear to reduce their effective effort per hour yet they do cut back on the number of hours worked per week relative to men who are likely to spend fewer non-market hours on household and childcare tasks."
The report says that women doctors are less likely to be married than men (80% of women and 89% of men). If they are married, women doctors are twice as likely to have a working spouse (94%) than their male counterparts (46%) and more than twice as likely to be married to another doctor (40% of women and 14% of men).
Sixty six per cent of women doctors and 79% of men doctors had children, and on average the women had fewer children than men.
Women also tend to seek specialties and jobs with fewer demands on time and more opportunity to balance career and family.
Although nearly a quarter of doctors are women, they accounted for only 17% of specialised internists and only 4% of surgeons. In contrast 44% of paediatricians were women.
Women were more likely to work in the less well paid primary care specialties, while men were more likely to work in the higher paying medical and surgical fields.
"Even now a female physician’s expectations regarding family responsibilities may constrain her choice of specialty or practice setting—whether or not she currently has a family," says the report.
Sex discrimination and a lack of female role models deter women doctors in Canada from general surgery, new research shows (American Journal of Surgery 2005;190:141-6).
The research, which was based on data from surveys sent to final year students at four medical schools and to all female general surgeons in Canada, shows that real and perceived barriers may be responsible for the low application rates to general surgery among women.
Of students who were deterred from general surgery, women were less likely than men to meet a same sex role model in general surgery and more likely to have experienced sex based discrimination during rotation.
"Female students had the perception that GS [general surgery] was incompatible with a rewarding family life, happy marriage, or having children, whereas female surgeons were far more positive about their career choice," says the report.
It adds, "Real barriers include sex-based discrimination and a lack of female role models in GS. There are also clear differences in perception between students and surgeons regarding family and lifestyle in general surgery that must be addressed."