Number of young female anesthesiologists increases, but wages lower than male colleagues

They spend a lot of time giving info about correlations of marital status, experience, & hours worked. They finally note that even allowing for all this, male anesthesiologists make significantly more per hour than females.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/rc-noy092315.php

Public Release: 24-Sep-2015
Number of young female anesthesiologists increases, but wages lower than male colleagues
RAND Corporation

An increasing number of young female physicians are becoming anesthesiologists, but the pay of those women lags behind their male peers, even after accounting for differences such as hours worked and experience, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Marital status played a more important role than children in driving gender differences in hours, as married female anesthesiologists worked significantly fewer hours than their male colleagues regardless of whether the anesthesiologist had children, according to findings published in the online first edition of Anesthesiology, the official journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists®.

Research in the field shows there is a wage gap between men and women across all medical specialties, not only anesthesiology. Additional research may need to be done to understand how and why women are choosing certain types of work environments.

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Despite an increasing number of women in the medical specialty, the study found that male anesthesiologists earned 29 percent more than female anesthesiologists, with a reported average annual income of $403,616 for men compared to $313,074 for women. The national average wage gap between men and women across all occupations is 23 percent.

Accounting for experience, employer type and hours worked reduces the wage gap from 29 percent to 7 percent, which explains most, but not all, of the gender differences in earnings for male and female anesthesiologists.

Female anesthesiologists worked approximately six fewer total hours and four fewer clinical hours per week compared to male anesthesiologists. In addition, female anesthesiologists were nearly three times as likely to work part time, defined as less than 35 hours a week.

When researchers adjust the pay estimates based only on hours worked, the male anesthesiologists earned more than their female peers -- $151 per hour compared to $131 per hour -- a wage gap of 13 percent.


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