Abstract
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 ensures equal pay for equal work; yet sixty years afterits enactment by Congress, pay equity continues to be a priority for women in academic
medicine. Despite comparable pay legislation, gender neutral advocacy, and social
change, women earn less than their male counterparts across many occupations. To assess
gender differences in physician pay, a quantitative, nonexperimental, causal comparative
research study was performed, using publicly available demographic, medical specialty,
and compensation data, for physicians in three public medical schools in the State of
Florida. The descriptive statistics showed a skewed distribution of adjusted annual
salaries by gender with a higher frequency of salaries in the low range. In general, female
physicians (M = 242,791) earned less than their male counterparts (M = 314,597). The
difference between means was $71,806. Nonparametric testing showed a statistically
significant difference in pay between female and male physicians, when grouped by class
title or faculty rank, years of experience, and medical specialty of primary board
certification in specific subgroup cohorts at each institution. Multiple regression analysis
showed that being female associated with a decrease in adjusted annual salary but to a
lesser extent than some of the other factors in this study. Given the gendered differences
in pay identified in this research study, many of which were statistically significant, a
simple, 5-step action plan was proposed as the solution.