Female doctors in the US are paid nearly USD 20,000 a year less than their male colleagues performing similar work, according to a study led by an Indian-origin researcher.
The study of medical pay looked at the gender pay gap among over 10,000 academic doctors working in publicly funded US medical schools across a wide range of specialties.
The research for doctors working in US medical schools shows a gender gap that could see female doctors losing out by around USD 1 million by retirement age, The Guardian reported.
"Although we were not surprised by the findings of our study, they are nonetheless deeply concerning. The fact that men and women in academic medicine who perform similar work are paid different amounts not only has implications for equity but for efficiency," said Anupam B Jena, first author of the research from Harvard Medical School.
The results show that female doctors earn, on average, around USD 50,000 (Rs 33.5 lakh) a year less than male doctors, with the pay gap at nearly USD 20,000 (more than Rs 13 lakh) after factors such as age, years of experience and specialty are taken into account, the report said.
Diana Lautenberger, director of women in medicine and science at the Association of American Medical Colleges said such salary analyses are important part of the discussion around gender equality.
"Based on these figures, a woman could be looking at a difference of around USD 1 million by the time she retires. I would encourage future studies to start disaggregating these data by other demographic factors so we can see where these issues impact specific communities," she said.
Published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, the study drew upon publicly available salary information for 10,241 academic doctors working at 24 public medical schools across 12 US states, the report said.
The researchers matched this data with information from a US-wide database that provided details on each doctor's sex, age, academic position, specialty and experience, as well as information relating to the amount of clinical work and research carried out, such as number of scientific publications.
When the researchers compared the salaries of male and female doctors, they found that while male doctors earned, on average, an annual salary of USD 257,957, female doctors took home just USD 206,641.
"The average female physician earns about USD 50,000 less than the average male physician, but that's before you start to account for any differences between male and female doctors," Jena added.
Among these differences were the findings that female doctors were typically younger, less likely to be full professors, and have fewer scientific publications than men.
However, when the researchers took into account a range of factors including each doctor's medical specialty, seniority, age, research productivity and amount of work with patients, women were still found to earn less than men, with the pay gap at USD 19,878.
