gender inequality within the healthcare workplace

Running head: GENDER INEQUALITY WITHIN HEALTHCARE

Gender Inequality Within the Healthcare Workplace Taylor Hickey University of Kentucky

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Abstract The inequality between genders is heavily heavil y noticeable within the healthcare workplace. There is still a large gap between the annual salary of each gender. Although the cause to this may be due to more males working in more specialized fields, it still uncovers the inequality of representation of each gender among amon g those specialized careers. Leadership in healthcare is another factor into the inequality between genders. Women have proven to be just as hard of workers as men, however the number of women in leadership positions is shockingly lower than the number of men. The stereotypes of our culture play a huge role in inequality in the healthcare workplace. Our culture expects women to be below men and at the same time expects men to be the constant source of income, no matter the circumstances. Finally, inequality plays a role role when the co-workers disrespect their colleagues through different forms of sexual harassment. Overall is equality could be established in the healthcare workplace, improvement and success can be accomplished. Keywords: inequality, healthcare, pay, leadership, stereotypes

Ever since women have entered the workplace, they have been striving for equality with their male counterparts in many aspects. Howeve r, women are not the only onl y ones faced with equality considering men face gender inequality of their own. Feminist Majority Foundation states (Reid 2014), “If we work at the same rate of progress that we‟re having, it would take about 500 years to reach gender parity.” The healthcare

workplace is not an exception to these disparities. Although society as a whole is making






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in factors such as payment, roles of leadership with in the workplace, and the rooted stereotypes of our culture. I will be examining the annual salary pay gap between genders, the gender inequality in the ability of advancement within healthcare, the expectations of genders inside and outside of the workplace, and employer bias of each gender and their set predisposition on which gender has a better work ethic. To make grounds on the existence of gender inequalities in the healthcare workplace, I will first cover the payment inequalities. Payment inequality has always been an issue in every workplace and has caused a large amount of differences between genders gende rs as well. Even though it seems as if the annual salary gap between men and women is closing, in the healthcare workplace, it appears to be getting larger. According to Andrew Fitch (2014), the pay gap is not specific to just pay but also is factored into how ho w many patients each physician gender is seeing, and the amount of service they‟re providing for each patient (See Figure 1). On average, women earn only 77 cents cent s to a man‟s dollar. Ethically this doesn‟t seem right due to the equivalence in job effort as well

as the outcomes of the job resulting in comparable measures between each gender. According to a blog written by Sarah Kliff (2013), “New research in the Journal J ournal of the American Medical Association suggests that the gender pay gap among

Figure 1. The pay gap between genders is largely noticeable.






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however, by the late 2000s, the pay gap had increased to be 25.3 percent. One possibility for the gap between gender salaries could involve the specialty and the type of work each gender is primarily a part of. Stated from authors, Seth Seabury, Amitabh Chandra, and Anupam Jena, also recorded in Kliff‟s blog (2013), This is because specialty and practice choice may be due not only to preferences of female physicians but also unequal opportunities. For example, are unadjusted earnings differences between male and female physicians ph ysicians due to a preference of female physicians for lower-paying specialties (eg. Pediatrics or primary care), or do female physicians have less opportunity to enter e nter higher paying specialties despite having similar preferences as male physicians? We see this to be true according to the th e Association of American Medical Colleges and their statistics claiming that women represent over half of our country‟s pediatricians but

yet fewer than 10 percent of orthopedic surgeons in the United States. Differences between genders annual salary could largely be impacted by the morals of the physician and their individual choices as a s to which companies they are willing to accept money from. According to Charles Ornstein from New York Times (Ornstein 2014), “ Mor e than 90 percent of the 300 doctors who collected the most money for speaking and consulting are men, based on information form the new government database, called Open Payments. By comparison, men accounted for about 68 percent of active physicians ph ysicians in the United States in 2012, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.” To expand on Ornstein‟s point, he goes on to express






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are more likely to be found in senior positions and higher medical specialty positions than women. The amount of leadership each gender has is another inequality within the healthcare workplace. Leadership within not only the healthcare workplace workpla ce but also within in every workplace could benefit from having equal statistics of both g enders in power. Not only does the difference in gender viewpoints bring b ring more ideas to discussion within the workplace, but it also attracts more people due to the equal opportunity for leadership within the company. In a Reid Report titled, Fighting for Gender and Racial Equality in the Workplace, Reporter Joy Reid interviews Natalia Oberti Noguera, the found and CEO

of he Pipeline Fellowship. During the interview, Noguera states (Reid 2014), “When we do see more women at the th e helm of start ups, for example, we see greater returns for the co mpanies who have more leadership positions filled start up.” Studies have shown that companies by women to create a more equal representation of each gender overall succeed better due to the diversity and variability of ideas from each counterpart. From a study done by Bloomberg BusinessWeek employees at a pharmacy company were tracked by placing sensor chips on them to track their movements and work throughout the day. Waber (2014), found that women and men were equally able to succeed in leadership tasks and have the same work ethic. In some instances, such as who was more likely to be promoted, women scored slightly higher than the men employees. emplo yees. However, at the company studied, only about 13% of the top executives were indeed female. The shocking results only proved that women wo men have a harder time gaining






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and stereotypes seem like the most logical reasons as to why there wasn‟t an equivalence

of success between each gender. Another cause for concern of inequality in the healthcare workplace is the stereotypes that are strongly rooted with our culture. The most outstanding stereotypes in our culture include certain ce rtain gender roles in the healthcare workplace such as, what type of job each gender should have, the duties each gender has outside of the workplace, and the responsibilities they have within their gender overall. As a culture, we see men as the dominant species and then women follow in their footsteps. However, as we progress as a nation, n ation, the statistics are no longer matching the stereotypes. Women are becoming more powerful and independent not only in the workplace but also in every day life as well. The stereotypes overall are the key factors in to what is crippling our ability to have equality within every workplace and especially the healthcare workplace. More times than not, our culture raised us to think a certain way and to keep that state of mind for most of our life. Sadly enough, en ough, when the word nurse is mentioned, we automatically pair the word with a female nurse. Even E ven though the statistic is changing, being a nurse is seen as a predominantly female position. The same thing goes for a physician or surgeon, most of the time we imagine them to be most likely a male physician. In our culture it is also common to make the presumption that a male will have a higher position than a female. Sometimes S ometimes even the gender of the physician is assumed to have certain characteristics and methods to how patients are going to be treated. As we see in an article from Women‟s Health Magazine (Wen 2013),








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doctors are more likely to follow evidence-based evidence -based guidelines, and they score higher on care and quality according accord ing to the study. Other research has found that th at female doctors tend to show greater empathy and are perceived as being better listeners. Overall women are seen to be more empathetic and create more of an emotional bond with their patients. On the other hand, men are more commonly Figure 2. Men Primarily have the expectation of working and bringing home money.

thought to be procedural and just follow basic guidelines. In spite of this, the expectation of a female being b eing empathetic and a male being pr ocedural ocedural doesn‟t always hold true. Another stereotype that creates inequalities in the

workplace is the expectation for men to constantly be providing for his family. For example, when a couple has a baby, it is obviously expected for the mother to take some time off of work, however it is seen not as necessary for the father to take off hardly any an y time at all. According the Family Fa mily and Medical Leave Act, workers get 12 work weeks off if they have been at their job for more than 12 months. McGregor (2014) found that the typical new dad was found to not take any further time off than what is paid, in which the time frame of paid leave leav e varies between different employers. As a male, they have the stereotype of being the






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For men, an extended amount of time taken off is seen as lazy and it adds to their competitive nature in a sense. Another gender-based bias affecting the gender inequality in the healthcare workplace is employer bias. Waber (2014) wrote Cornell University conducted a study on the type of employee hired. To do so, they sent in 1,276 fake resumes to apply to real job positions, all with the same information information and job experience on them except for personal information regarding gender and whether or not the individual had kids. The study concluded that males with children were the most likely to be hired, followed by males and females who did not have any children, and finally the lowest percentage was the category of women who had children. When interviewing employers as to why this was, most of their responses were along the lines that women with children would be more likely to put their children before their obligations to the job. These results showed obvious bias towards women and a woman‟s tendency to have the “Mama Bear” instinct and put their family before anything else. However, they had no hard evidence that the individual would choose family over their job or that their male counterpart with children would choose his job over his family. All of their reasons were based upon presumptions of the gender and their typical behaviors and priorities. Now that we have looked at how






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medical field who had been sexually harassed in one way or another. First looking at 1993, Freedman found that 73% from her survey had reported some sort of sexual harassment. When conducting a survey again in 2000, she found that about half of her respondents had reported some form of sexual harassment. Thankfully Thankfull y yes, the statistic had lowered but the unnerving unne rving part of the data is that the number still remained in the majority of those surveyed. Respect in the healthcare workplace and in every workplace ideally is an extremely fundamental factor. The equality between genders in the healthcare workplace would create a ripple effect for the businesses as a whole. The attractiveness of equality opens the business up to performing better. According to the Workplace Gender Equality Equ ality Agency equality between genders in the workplace can result in creating a higher level of competitiveness and productivity along with appealing to top-tier talent due to the balanced ability of advancement within the company. For instance, a company that does not embrace and provide opportunities for both genders will lose the more highly educated prospects to companies that will provide equal opportunity. Erasing gender inequality in the healthcare involves diminishing the pay gap, creating crea ting equal opportunities for leadership positions, and ridding our culture of the rooted gender stereotypes we are raised with. If






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Bibliography Freedman, J. (2010, November 16). Women in Medicine: Are We “There” Yet? Retrieved from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/732197_print Hall, J. (2013, June 14). Why Wh y Men Don‟t Take Paternity Leave. Forbe’s Leave. Forbe’s Magazine.

Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/ Health, S. (2014). Develop Good Coworker Relations. Reader’s Digest . Retrieved from http://www.rd.com/ Kliff, S. (2013, September 3). Female doctors earn $50,000 less than male doctors [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.washintonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/03/female-doctorsearn-50k-less-than-male-doctors/ Lipsey, R. F. (2014, September 29). 2 9). Men Don‟t Have It All [Web log post]. Retrieved

from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-fishman-lipsey/men-don‟t-have-itall_b_5871402.html McGregor, J. (2014, June 9). When Dads Take Paternity Leave [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2014/06/09/whendads-take-paternity-leave/






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Waber, B. (2014 January, 30). What Data Analytics Say About Gender Inequality in the Workplace. BusinessWeek. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/ Wen, L. (2013, December 13). Are Female Doctors Better Than Male Ones? Women’s Health Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.WomensHealthMag.com/

gender inequality within the healthcare workplace

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