The Parenting Penalty for Female Physicians

Female physicians experience greater earnings penalty due in part to marriage, children.Previous studies have shown that female physicians earn less than their male counterparts, so we wanted to investigate the impacts of marriage and children on the gap in female physician earnings.

The retrospective, cross-sectional study included 95,435 physicians who responded to the American Community Survey between 2005 and 2019. Researchers assessed gaps in earnings and hours according to sex by calculating family status and physician age. Main outcomes included annual earned income, usual hours worked per week and earnings per hour worked. Results showed that female physicians appeared more likely to be single (18.8% vs. 11.2%) and less likely to have children (53.3% vs. 58.2%) when compared with their male counterparts. Researchers observed a female-male earnings gap among those aged 25 years to 64 years of approximately $1.6 million for single physicians, $2.5 million for married physicians without children and $3.1 million for physicians with children. Male physicians earned between 21.4% and 23.9% more per hour than female physicians.

“These findings did not surprise me. As a woman in medicine, I have encountered the way that structural sexism operates within the medical education system. However, I was surprised by the magnitude of disparity in earnings. On average, female physicians with children earn more than $3 million less than their male counterparts throughout their careers.”...Read More

Have you observed discrepancies in career advancement opportunities for male and female physicians?