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Despite countless evidence to the contrary, people often dispute that the gender wage gap is real.
There are rules designed to hide it, such as not discussing salaries, but most women can cite an example of a time they were paid less for the same work.
Recently, Aussie surgeon Dr. Nikki Stamp went viral for a Twitter thread explaining the wage gap in medicine.
It turns out, it’s not just an American problem as you might have supposed, like I did.
When Bored Panda reached out to the heart and lung transplant surgeon, Dr. Stamp explained the biggest challenge in overcoming the issue:
“It is mainly men who don’t believe in the existence of the gender pay gap, or attribute it to simply to women who have children.”
And we’ve certainly all heard that argument before.
Dr. Stamp started by dedicating her thread to the male colleagues who have argued the subject with her.
https://twitter.com/drnikkistamp/status/1362232429679767552?s=20
She then defined what is actually meant by, “Gender pay gap.”
Firstly, a gender pay gap refers to a difference in money earned between the genders. It is an established measure of women’s position in the economy and is the result of social & economic factors that reduce women’s earning capacity @WGEAgency
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
She immediately dispelled the notion that it can be easily solved with nothing more than blind pay scales.
One myth is that the fixing the gender pay gap is all about ensuring equal pay, such as through standardised pay grades. This oversimplifies the fact that the gap is from complex factors and requires cultural change to allow full participation of women in the workforce.
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
And she laid down some facts about the gap in medicine, both in her native Australia and around the world.
In Australia, the gender pay gap sits at 14% which equates to men earning $1812 per week and women $1558.40, if working full time. In medicine, the gender pay gap around the world sits at 20-29%, with gaps varying by specialties.
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
Dr. Stamp’s focus was on surgery, since that is her specialty.
And she wanted to be sure that people understood it’s about both lower pay and reduced opportunities–both, together.
In surgery, a multitude of papers have investigated the gender pay gap and a large number of them are from the US where renumeration systems can be quite heterogenous. For example, female ENT surgeons earn 20% less, controlling for time spent at home https://t.co/i5ymNWjYVt
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
COVID, as we all know, has made it worse by increasing the burden on the caregivers.
COVID has exacerbated the gender pay gap in medicine, as reported in the UK – which is important since the UK uses a single payer (the NHS) meaning that there isn’t room for issues such as contract negotiation of private in the same way there is in the US. https://t.co/p26TIBOi1h
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
Canada and Australia apparently use similar models where there’s a set fee for each service a doctor provides, but still, women make less.
Likewise, Canada has a fee for service model, similar to Australia, which demonstrated earnings 24% lower for female surgeons, with the biggest gap in cardiothoracic surgery. Quelle surprise. https://t.co/wxms4Z6o20
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
And yet…
Australia can deny this is an issue – we should get the same amount of money similar to Canada of the UK because of our health care structure. The gender pay gap can be as high as 64% here – male orthopaedic surgeons earn $439,629 pa, females $159,479 according to the ATO.
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
While everyone recognizes the need for a structured pay system, it doesn’t fix everything because there are systemic problems too.
As we can see, a structured compensation plan does not fix this: https://t.co/z9uSV14Bkr further hammering home that cultural change is important
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
And Dr. Stamps acknowledged that when accounting for race, women of color make even less.
It goes without saying (at least I hope it does), that in gender pay gap data, the intersection of gender and race exacerbates these findings. https://t.co/h8RhF0bUF0 – I can’t find Australian data on this
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
There are a whole host of reasons for the pay gap. It’s a complicated issue:
Reasons (cont’d)
– Poor career progression/promotion
– More caring responsibilities
– Casual/locum contracts preclude maternity leavehttps://t.co/7NG4ivIXdUhttps://t.co/zDwmSd3bi7— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
And the tendency for people, men especially, to reduce the disparity to burden of choosing to have babies is both patronizing and untrue.
Childbearing and child rearing does affect pay but it is not the only reason – women without children still experience it. Men and institutions denying the existence of the pay gap is a huge problem – https://t.co/JQZPG051cb
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
Dr. Stamps suggested a few ways to fix the issue.
So how do we fix this? Some useful ideas from @HBR
– Enhance research and reporting into salaries and remuneration in medicine
– Pay transparency
– Sponsorship of women
– Equitable promotion
– General abolishment of gender bias in medicinehttps://t.co/xW7HaFM7z4— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
And she reiterated the reason she posted the thread–because people still don’t believe the gap is real.
Now importantly, what prompted this lengthy thread? I have had a few recent interactions with male colleagues who have tried to tell me that the gender pay gap isn’t real, especially in Australia, but any issues can be traced back to babies, which is intellectually lazy & wrong
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
Dr. Stamps pointed out that medicine is a particularly biased industry.
And yet, the data says otherwise. The experiences of women say otherwise. And the persistence of letting people into leadership positions when they deny the science, the data and the experience stops us changing it. Fin.
— Dr Nikki Stamp FRACS (@drnikkistamp) February 18, 2021
Unfortunately a lot of the rude and disbelieving comments on her thread serve to illustrate her point perfectly.
And soon, other doctors were chiming in.
There’s also this one that was just published last week. The more women there are in a specialty, the lower the salary for that specialty. The pink collar worker effect on display in medicine.https://t.co/tJYxW6eOvs
— Dr. Lisa Iannattone (@lisa_iannattone) February 19, 2021
I’d add diffences in mentoring, patronage, and discretionary employer financial awards to the list of reasons.
— Dr SJ Louise Smith (@SJ_LS) February 18, 2021
A Canadian doctor shared her own research on the subject.
Thanks for this!
Since Canada has lagged far behind on studying and addressing the #GenderPayGap in medicine, @tara_kiran and I published this analysis paper last summer, which has prompted some great discussions since. https://t.co/Czp6R9dd3a
— Michelle Cohen, MD (@DocMCohen) February 18, 2021
And another user shared an article from the Harvard Business Review that explains how men tend to receive more actionable feedback during their reviews than women do.
I think this Harvard Business Review article is a beautiful piece of qualitative research that goes a little way to explain the difficulties for women to progress.
I’m sure it applies to medicine toohttps://t.co/CFZ8aD7SPF@DrElenaDoldor @HarvardBiz— Mary Venn (@MaryVenn4) February 18, 2021
Eddy Ng, the James and Elizabeth Freeman Professor of Management at Bucknell University, expessed similar concerns to Bored Panda.
“[Women] don’t fit the prototype of what leaders look like. They often lacked the preparation, not in terms of qualifications, but the socialization necessary to ascend to elite levels. Some of these are political skills, some are sponsorships, and some are social capital acquired at the golf courses and locker rooms, and few women partake in these socialization activities.”
When asked how the pay gap can finally be closed, Dr. Stamp pointed out that it’s going to take a lot of work to combat deep, systemic issues:
“This could be a chicken and egg situation—it’s thought that reducing the gender pay gap increases women’s workforce participation and reduces the amount of housework they do, increasing the amount their spouses do. But of course, women have also been shown to do more chores at home than their husbands even when they earn more money. However, these are big cultural changes requiring us to upend long-standing social structures. Recognizing that we experience the world differently depending on our gender would be a good start.”
Governments and organizing bodies may legislate what they can, but if anything is really going to change, it’s going to be up to individuals to shift it.
What do you think about Dr. Stamp’s ideas? Tell us in the comments.
