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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Timothy J. Hoff, PhD, Dept. of Health Policy, Management, and Behavior, University at Albany, SUNY, 1 University Place, Rensselaer, NY 12144, 518-402-6512, thoff@albany.edu
Approximately one quarter of physicians are now women. This figure has increased from seven percent in 1970. Despite their increasing importance in the profession, female physicians remain a relatively unexamined group. Prior research has rarely considered the experience of male and female physicians in toto, i.e., examining issues of compensation at the same time as professional, non-work, and job-related experiences. This research tends to oversimplify the issues, i.e., usually explaining job, stress, and compensation-related differences between male and female physicians in one of three ways: differing human capital accumulation between the sexes, pre-employment socialization differences, or workplace barriers forcing females to make satisficing rather than maximizing decisions in their career. The present study adds to the literature on physician gender by exploring a more complex stance, i.e., proposing that there may be important differences and similarities around the career experience between male and female physicians that, when considered together, do not lend themselves to clear-cut explanations. The following questions guide empirical analysis:
(1) What specific job-related, non-work, and professional differences and similarities exist between male and female physicians engaging in the new career of hospital medicine? (2) When considered in toto, how do observed differences compare to traditional explanations for gender stratification, and how do any observed similarities in career experience between male and female hospitalists render those explanations less complete for understanding male-female career experience in medicine?
Primary data collected through a 1999 national survey of members of the National Association of Inpatient Physicians are used to compare the everyday career experiences of male and female hospitalists. From the initial sampling frame of 820 individuals, 393 usable responses were obtained for a response rate of 48%. Key findings include: (a) female hospitalists earn significantly less annually ($22,000) on average than male hospitalists, even after controlling for possible confounders; (b) female and male hospitalists work similar hours, carry similar workloads, and are equally productive, despite earning the gender-based pay gap; (c) these similarities in work and productivity remain the same even for male and female hospitalists who are married and have children; and (d) female hospitalists maintain positive feelings towards their careers even as they assume multiple work and non-work roles. These findings have implications for how researchers and managers should think about the contemporary female physician, i.e., her career development needs, and for how researchers can raise new questions around physician gender in their work.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Gender, Physicians
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.