Is your doctor a woman? She's probably being paid less.

Medicine has a gender problem

No matter the job, women are generally getting paid less than men.
(Image credit: Ikon Images / Alamy Stock Photo)

How much does a doctor earn? You might think the answer is obvious: "A lot." But physician compensation varies widely depending on specialty and where the doctor practices. And even when you adjust for all of those factors, there's a variable that dictates the answer to that question: gender.

That's not exactly news — according to the U.S. Department of Labor, women earn about 83 cents to every man's dollar. And in medicine, despite the fact that 47.8 percent of the people graduating with medical degrees in 2015 were women, a similar wage gap persists. The gender gap in medicine is so pervasive that it's gotten the attention of professional societies and academic journals. Just this month, Academic Medicine, the journal of the American Association of Academic Medical Colleges, published an entire special issue devoted to women in medicine, uncovering a host of disparities.

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Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore is a journalist from Boulder, Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Time, Smithsonian.com, mental_floss, Popular Science and more.