Underrepresented-in-medicine women assistant professors earned $0.78 for every $1.00 earned by White men across U.S. medical schools, according to a recent study.
In a cross-sectional study, researchers examined salary disparities among assistant professors at U.S. medical schools based on gender, race and ethnicity, and their intersections. Dalia Owda, MD, MHS, of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan, and colleagues used aggregated data from the 2022-2023 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Faculty Salary Report, analyzing compensation for nearly 46,000 faculty members across 19 clinical specialties at 153 institutions.
Investigators categorized faculty by gender (man or woman), race and ethnicity (Asian, White, or underrepresented in medicine [URIM]), and combined gender-race-ethnicity intersections. URIM was defined per AAMC guidelines to include physicians identifying as Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or multiracial Hispanic. Salary metrics included median annual compensation, absolute salary differences, and salary ratios, with White men serving as the reference group. The group's findings were published in JAMA Network Open.
The researchers reported that women earned a median annual salary of $266,450 compared with $330,000 for men, yielding a salary ratio of $0.81:$1.00. Asian physicians had a median salary of $291,360 (salary ratio, $0.97:$1.00), and URIM physicians earned $278,010 (salary ratio, $0.93:$1.00)—both lower than the median salary of $300,000 for White physicians.
At the intersection of gender and race, URIM women had the lowest earnings, with a median annual salary of $259,570 compared with $333,800 for White men (salary ratio, $0.78:$1.00). Asian women and White women followed, with salary ratios of $0.80:$1.00 and $0.81:$1.00, respectively. URIM men and Asian men also earned less than White men, with salary ratios of $0.92:$1.00 and $0.98:$1.00.
The researchers further examined whether the demographic composition of a specialty correlated with salary differences—and found no clear association. These findings suggest persistent salary inequities across academic medicine, particularly among URIM women, and reflect broader systemic patterns identified in the study.
Full disclosures can be found in the published study.
Source: JAMA Network Open