Pay Equity & Women in Medicine: Looking Towards The Future

Women have been making great strides in the medical realm over the past few years, yet it is taking women a long time to break into all specialities within the medical professional on par with men. The first woman to attend and receive her medical degree was Elizabeth Blackwell in 1849. In 1864 Rebecca Lee Crumples became the first African American woman to receive her medical degree and in 1889 Susan La Flesche Picotte became the first Native American Woman to receive a medical degree.

Dr. Antonia Novello was the first woman, as well as the first Hispanic Surgeon General. Dr. Novello emphasized the need for greater focus on women's health and treatment of women with AIDS and on neonatal transmission of HIV.

More recently, Duke University named Harvard researcher Nancy Andrews Dean of its medical school, making her the first and only female Dean in the nation's top 10 medical schools. Approximately 33% of Associate Deans of medical schools are women and 26% of Senior Associate Deans are women.

While the number of female full time professors, department chairs and medical school Deans throughout the U.S. is quite low, studies suggest that this will change now that approximately half of the student body in medical school is comprised of women. As such, these women will eventually move into positions within academia and hence expand the numbers of full professors and department chairs.

Though the situation for women entering the medical profession is brighter than it was in the 70's and 80's, women still face many obstacles in their paths towards reaching their goals. For example, due to women still having greater responsibilities for child rearing, female physicians choose to specialize in areas of medicine that generally provide more flexibility in terms of their daily schedule, such as pediatrics, family medicine and internal medicine, however are lower paying specialties. One study found that in families where both parents were physicians, 92% of the female physicians were the primary caretakers of the children, compared to 21% of the male physicians.

On average, female physicians make less money than their male counterparts. An article in the Annals of Internal Medicine reported that women internists in Pennsylvania made $63,000 less than their male colleagues. Even after adjusting for variables such as lower-paying specialties and salaried positions rather than partnerships, the women surveyed still earned 14% less than their male peers.

Hopefully as more women enter the medical profession they will create new frameworks that will allow them to balance both roles of doctors and mothers, without sacrificing on specialty choice or higher income. In addition, as noted by the American Medical Women's Association, thanks to the increased role of women in medicine, women's health issues are receiving more attention from doctors and researchers.

This piece was written by Luciana Salinas, WLF intern, with the assistance of Sharon Grosfeld, WLF Executive Director.