Men should make a concerted effort to become aware of the unique challenges faced by women, such as discrimination, harassment, and childbearing decisions, to become effective mentors, Dr. Crosby continued. “I often hear that things are so much better now, and while we may have made some progress, the ongoing gender pay gap proves that we have so much more work to do,” she said. “We can’t stop this conversation, and we can’t stop improving until we have true equity.”
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April 2023On another front, Dr. O’Brien said that institutions and practices need to examine the salaries and resources for male and female otolaryngologists and determine if there is equity in referrals, operating room time, support staff allocation, research support, expectations for more uncompensated work by female otolaryngologists, and leadership roles.
“Data will be necessary to find gaps in factors that affect salary, including procedures and billing, as well as academic promotion,” Dr. O’Brien said. “Transparency across academic institutions would likely drive more institutions to take active steps to close gender gaps.” For example, transparency might occur if national reputation scores included gender parity as a metric for excellence, like patient outcomes or research funding.
Transparency across academic institutions would likely drive more institutions to take active steps to close gender gaps. —Erin O’Brien, MD
Pay transparency is also key. It’s important to know what metrics are followed and how salaries, bonuses, and raises are set, Dr. Patel said. Annual wage audits have also proven helpful in industries outside of medicine.
Looking at the bigger picture, Kathleen Yaremchuk, MD, MSA, chair of Henry Ford Medical Group’s department of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery in Detroit, said the issue of gender pay equity isn’t unique to medicine, surgery, or otolaryngology. The “leaky pipeline,” “glass ceiling,” or “broken rung” are all terms used to describe the fact that women are less likely to be promoted academically or in other leadership roles in their profession. It’s a societal issue; women continue to be paid less for their work effort than men,” Dr. Yaremchuk said. The ratio of men to women who are full professors in otolaryngology is three to one, she said, and that hasn’t changed for the past 35 years.
Karen Appold is a freelance medical writer based in San Diego, Calif.
How the Pandemic Affected the Pay Gap
Time and again, it has been shown that women medicine continue to handle most of the household duties, including child and elder care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, requirements for care increased substantially, said Dana L. Crosby, MD, MPH, department chair, residency program director, and professor in the department of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield.
Anecdotally, in Dr. Crosby’s department, female faculty with young children had a larger drop in clinical productivity compared to their male counterparts of the same rank. “This stemmed from the number of days that female faculty stayed home to care for their children due to illness or closed daycare centers as compared to their male counterparts,” she said. “Most likely this differential reaches beyond clinical productivity and has likely impacted other areas, including research productivity.”
Women disproportionately left the workforce during the pandemic, leading to a record low number of women in the workforce over the past 25 years. “An unemployment penalty, in which women who try to reenter the market are penalized for their leaves of absence with wage cuts, will consequently impact women for decades,” said Anju Patel, MD, a consultant for Mytonomy, a technology-based patient education company in Bethesda, Md., and former faculty at the Harvard Medical School department of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery in Boston. In academia, the number of research submissions and publications dropped significantly for women, leading to unequal promotion opportunities, unequal resource disbursement through grants and funding, and, consequently, suppressed wages.