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Gender Gaps in Physician Compensation by Specialty


Throughout our how much doctors make by specialty series, we’ve looked at how different factors influence salaries for doctors, such as the practice environment, employment type, and gender. We’ve seen a wide range in differences in physician compensation between male and female doctors across the different specialties. Since salary and compensation transparency is key to helping physicians know their worth and to advocate for it, and because a rising tide lifts all boats, below we look at the gender gap in medicine by specialty. We also include interesting insights we noted while compiling the data by specialty for this article, understanding that the gender gap is multifaceted and no number can be cited in isolation without taking into consideration the gender makeup of a specialty, of physician practice ownership makeup, hours worked, productivity and practice environment, as each specialty has its own trends that may influence gender gap within that specialty. We dig into those more specifically on our dedicated specialty salary and compensation articles.


In the strictest sense of the word, gender pay gaps should refer to gaps that persist when all factors that contribute to compensation are conrolled for. Our data cannot control for all of these factors, so the differences in pay here should not be looked at in terms of absolute gender gap percentages, but rather as a starting point to talk about trends. More about this below.


Disclaimers/Disclosures: This information is derived from our physician salary and compensation databases, but is subject to self-reporting errors and availability of relevant data points from our online communities. This information is provided for educational purposes only, and is aimed at advocating for individual physicians. It is not intended to be used for collective bargaining; please see additional disclosures and disclaimers on the physician salary data pages. Please also do your own research before making any decisions based on the information provided. We are not formal financial, legal, or tax professionals and do not provide individualized advice. You should consult these as appropriate. We highly recommend having your physician employment agreement reviewed by a physician contract review attorney to ensure you have the most up to date and relevant information for your specific situation.


The gender gap in physician compensation of reported salaries by specialty within medicine

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How Gender Gap Aggregate Stats Were Determined


Data used to assess the gender gap in physician compensation by specialty below was collected from mid-2023 to mid-2024 through our physician salary and compensation negotiation database, a free resource to all members of our online physician community, which consists of over 6,000 data points. 


In order to avoid outliers of part time arrangements, we looked at physicians who worked an average of 36+ hours a week. We focused solely on attending physicians, removing resident and fellow data from the dataset.


Because the gender gap is so complex, it’s particularly important to note potential confounding factors in this dataset:

  • More respondents in some specialties than others

  • Percentage of male vs female respondents in each specialty differed

  • Makeup of practice environment (academic, private practice, employed, government, etc.) of the respondents within the same specialty varied

  • Percentage of practice owners (partners) varied within each specialty

  • Most importantly, we did not have enough datapoints in many of the specialties to break down those that worked 36+ hours a week into smaller categories, which means that those working 40 hours are in the same category as those working 60 hours. As those working more hours likely have higher productiivty and pay, if the average male physician works more hours than the average female physician and has a productivity based component to compensation, their numbers will be disproportionately higher. We suspect that this factors significantly into how high the numbers came out for some of the specialties with the particularly high gender gaps.


It is our hope that as the dataset was relatively large, some of these effects are mitigated; however, it’s always important to note this issue, particularly in smaller specialties where outlier data points can more heavily influence averages for these specialties. As we get more data, we hope to continue to update these for a more robust dataset.



A Word of Caution About Interpretation of Our Gender Gap Related Statistics


Gender pay gaps should refer to data that controls for all factors and examine how much of a difference remains when all of these are taking into account. Ours does not, so this data should not be looked at in terms of absolute percentages, but rather as a starting point to talk about trends.


Whenever discussing gender gap statistics in medicine, it’s critically important to take into consideration how demographic trends towards choice of specialty, work environment, hours worked, how schedules are templated, and the decision to be an employee versus an owner affect pay. These certainly explain a portion of the gaps we see here, so we do feel the real gender gap percentages within these specialties are smaller than those reported here.


Digging deeper, demographics may influence a physician’s choice of:


  • Practice environment: certain practice environments typically offer lower pay but better benefits and/or less hours or productiivty demands

  • Employment type: partners or owners in private practices often make significantly more than employeed physicians without ownership

  • Location: different states and local metropolitan areas can drive economic factors such as compensation

  • Hours worked and/or patients seen per week: compensation models are often based on RVUs or collections, so physicians who work more or see more patients make more

  • Specialty or subspecialty: specialization often has one of the largest influences on average salaries


These factors, along with others, can help explain why the gender gap is more pronounced in some specialties than others, as you’ll see below.


For this article, we chose to break down the gender pay gaps by specialty. However, we could easily have chosen to do it by practice environment, partner vs. employee, hours worked, or patients seen per week, and the numbers would very likely have been significantly different in absolute value based on how much that factor weighs in to overall compensation.


That said, we want to emphasize that just as large scale studies controlling for these factors in other professions still demonstrate the existence of a gender gap, we also believe our data also indicates a gender gap given the widespread differences. When looking at apples to apples individual datapoints within the database, we do see many examples of differences in pay between male and female physicians with otherwise similar location, specialty, practice environment, and productivity.


We urge you to look at these individual datapoints yourself as well by accessing the full free physician salary and compensation database (accessible only to members of the physician communities) to view the individual data points and compare apples to apples to your specific situation. These data points include gender as well as the above factors so it is clear what similarities and differences may be present between your situation and the data point.



The Overall Gender Pay Gap Across Physician Specialties


To get a representation of what the overall gender gap in medicine was, we aggregated the data about the gender gap in salaries by each specialty that we compiled below.


The average gender gap across all the specialties we had enough data to assess showed that our male doctors averaged 15% higher salaries than the female physicians in the same specialty. The median gender gap was a 14% higher average salary for males within the same specialty.


The gender gap across specialties in medicine by physician compensation

A few specialties, as you’ll see below, had a reverse gender gap, where our female physicians reported a higher average salary. We also had specialties where the gender gap was far greater than the average, even up to 30%+. In these cases, we looked into influencing factors that helped explain why these specialties stood out compared to the average and included them for each specialty below.



The Gender Gap in Medicine by Specialty


The Gender Gap in Anesthesiology


Female anesthesiologists reported an average salary of $491,000. Male anesthesiologists reported an average 13% higher salary of $554,000.


Female and male anesthesiologists were equally likely to practice locums or be 1099 contractors. They were also equally likely to work for the government or nonprofit organizations. 


Our male anesthesiologists, however, were slightly more likely to be owners or partners in a private practice (18% versus 15%). And female anesthesiologists were more likely to work in academic hospitals (27% versus 18%), which paid around 15% less than nonacademic hospitals and group private practices.




The Gender Gap in Cardiology


Female cardiologists reported an average salary of $520,000. Male cardiologists reported an average salary of $613,000. Our male doctors averaged 18% higher than our female doctors.


It is interesting to note that electrophysiologists on average earned more than cardiologists who focused on interventional or non-invasive cardiology. All of our electrophysiologist data came from males, so subspecialization may play a role here. Hours worked and practice environment may also play a role.




The Gender Gap in Critical Care Medicine


Female critical care physicians reported 14% lower average salaries of $418,000 than their male counterparts at $477,000. We don’t currently have enough data points to conclusively draw statements about how other factors such as average hours worked play into the gender gap.




The Gender Gap in Dermatology


Female dermatologists reported an average salary of $501,000. Male dermatologists reported an average salary of $591,000, or 18% higher. (We changed our full-time equivalency for this specialty to 31+ hours a week and used this for our analysis.)


We noted in this specialty that female dermatologists were slightly more likely to work in academic hospitals, and averaged a slightly less number of hours of work a week. These factors often contribute to lower salaries. Another important factor we don't have enough data to conclusively examine is differences between volume of patients seen or billing patterns.




The Gender Gap in Emergency Medicine


For emergency medicine, many of our physicians reported being paid hourly versus being given a base salary (plus productivity). Female EM doctors reported an average hourly rate of $230/hour. Male EM physicians reported a 7% higher average rate at $247/hour. This is one of the smaller gender gaps we saw across specialties we assessed.


Female emergency medicine physicians were more likely (18% versus 13%) to work for government facilities or academic hospitals, which typically offer less pay but better benefits and schedules/hours, but they were just as likely to be owners or partners in practices as male emergency medicine doctors.




The Gender Gap in Endocrinology


Female endocrinologists reported an average salary of $269,000. Male endocrinologists reported 20% higher earnings with an average salary of $324,000.


While we noted that female endocrinologists were more likely to work for government settings, our dataset for endocrinology was rather small (70 contributions), so it’s difficult to draw any conclusive observations on how other factors may impact the gender gap in this speciality.


If you would like to see this specialty updated in the future, please consider taking a few minutes to contribute your anonymous physician salary and compensation data for the year to help support future updates.




The Gender Gap in Family Medicine


Female family medicine physicians reported an average salary of $290,000. This is 6% lower than the average salary of $307,000 reported by male family medicine doctors.


This is one of the smaller gender gaps we saw, but it was interesting to note that we saw similar trends in other factors that typically led to larger gender gaps. For example, we noticed that female family medicine doctors were less likely to be partners or owners in a practice (6% versus 10%). They were also more likely to work in non-profit or government run facilities, which were the lowest paying practice environments.




The Gender Gap in Gastroenterology


Female gastroenterologists reported an average salary of $522,000. Male gastroenterologists reported an average salary 32% higher of $689,000.


This is more than the average across all specialties and we suspect it the actual gender gap is less than 32% when factoring in practice environment and hours worked. Male gastroenterologists reported working slightly more a week, which may contribute to increased productivity that results in higher RVUs or collections on average.


Given the large gender gap in this specialty, we look forward to tracking trends and seeing how other factors influence the gender gap with future updates.




The Gender Gap in Hematology Oncology


Female heme-onc doctors reported an average salary of $449,000. Male heme-onc physicians reported an average salary 22% higher of $550,000.


Male hematologist oncologists were more likely to be practice owners or partners, and female hematologist oncologists were more likely to specialize in medical oncology only, which averaged 8% less than the overall salaries for heme-onc.




The Gender Gap in Hospice and Palliative Care


In hospice and palliative care, we actually saw a very slight reverse gender gap, with female doctors earning an average salary of $262,000, which was 2% higher than male doctors at $257,000.


We noted that male hospice and palliative care physicians were more likely to work in academic hospitals, which averaged less than non-academic hospitals and corporate groups, but not by much for our current dataset. We only had 62 contributions, so we don’t want to make any conclusive statements at this time. We would love to dig into this deeper and see how trends continue with more today.


Please contribute your anonymous physician salary and compensation data today.




The Gender Gap in Hospital Medicine


Our female hospitalist members reported an average salary of $293,000. Male hospitalists reported a 4% higher average salary of $306,000.


The relative lack of a significant differential may in part secondary to more standardization in scheduling and pay per shift given the scheduling of hospitalist positions.


Interestingly, we still see some of the same trends for hospitalists that we see in specialties with larger gender gaps. For example, our male hospitalists are more likely to be partners/owners in a private practice (10% vs 4%) and more likely to practice as 1099 independent contractors or locums physicians (11% vs 6%), which typically offer higher average salaries than working as a W2 employee.


In addition, our female hospitalists are more likely to work at academic hospitals (24% vs 20%), which typically offer lower salaries but better other benefits as part of the compensation package.




The Gender Gap in Internal Medicine


Female internal medicine physicians reported an average salary of $292,000, which was 11% lower than the $325,000 average salary for their male colleagues.


We noted that our female internal medicine doctors were more likely to work in typically lower paying practice environments such as government and nonprofit facilities (13% versus 6%) or academic hospitals (24% versus 19%).




The Gender Gap in Nephrology


Female nephrologists reported an average salary of $307,000. Male nephrologists reported 25% higher earnings with an average salary of $383,000. We had a smaller dataset for this specialty (56 contributions), so it’s hard to draw any conclusions, but we did note that female nephrologists were more likely to report working for academic hospitals, and physicians at academic hospitals reported 15% lower salaries than colleagues working in private practice for nephrology.




The Gender Gap in Neurology


Female neurologists reported an average salary of $330,000. Our male neurologists reported a 20% higher average salary of $396,000.


We noted that subspecialty may factor into a portion of the gender gap for neurology, as the majority of our neurohospitalists were males, while many of our movement disorder and neuromuscular medicine doctors were females. Neurohospitalists averaged 8% higher salaries than the overall average for neurology, while movement disorder and neuromuscular medicine doctors reported lower than average salaries.




The Gender Gap in Obstetrics & Gynecology


Female OBGYN doctors reported an average salary of $368,000. Male OBGYNs reported an 18% higher average salary of $436,000.


While few of our female or male OBGYN doctors reported locums or 1099 work, male OBGYNs were slightly more likely to be owners or partners in their practice (14% versus 10%). Partners/owners averaged 19% higher incomes than W2 employees in this specialty.


Our male and female OBGYN doctors were also equally as likely to work in government and nonprofit positions, but female OBGYNs were more likely to work at academic hospitals (25% versus 20%). Academic hospital positions paid around 15% - 20% less than other practice environments.

Subspecialtizaiton may also play a role, as we saw that fields where additional fellowship training is required in OBGYN, such as MFM, urogynecology, and reproductive endocrinology, pay substantially higher on average (this is not always the case for all specialties, such as peds subspecialties).


Accounting for these factors helps explain some, but likely not all, of the gender gap we see, especially when considering that the vast majority of our contributions in this specialty came from female OBGYNs.


Learn more about the average salary for OB-GYNs.



The Gender Gap in Ophthalmology


Female ophthalmologists reported an average salary of $459,000, which was 20% lower than the average salary of $549,000 reported by male ophthalmologists. Male ophthalmologists were much more likely (36% versus 16%) to be an owner or partner in their practice. Owners/partners averaged 28% higher salaries than W2 employees.




The Gender Gap in Orthopedics


Please note that we had a small dataset for this specialty (43 contributions overall, of which there were 8 full time females and 30 full time males), and we are not confident that our statistics reflect the overall salary trends within the specialty given the small number of female respondents. Therefore, we did not include it in the summary graph showing specialty gaps at the top of the article. We include this data only for your interest, but urge caution in extrapolating it.


Orthopedics was one of the few specialties where we saw a reverse gender gap with our current data. Female orthopedic surgeons reported an average salary of $772,000. Male orthopedic surgeons reported a 3% lower average salary of $750,000.


We did note that our female respondents, on average, had more years of experience outside of training than the male respondents. We also had a higher percentage of hand surgery specialists for our female surgeons, who reported higher than average salaries compared to the overall average for orthopedics. This may be contributing to why we are seeing higher average salaries for females in orthopedic surgeons in our dataset, a trend we have not seen in other orthopedic surgery datasets. 




The Gender Gap in Otolaryngology (ENT)


Female ENT doctors reported an average salary of $518,000. Male otolaryngologists reported an average salary of $687,000. The gender gap in otolaryngology was 33%, which is the highest we’ve seen across all the specialties we’ve assessed.


We noted that female otolaryngologists were more likely to work in academic hospitals (36% versus 24%) which typically offer lower salaries. Additionally, recall that there may be differences in the average number of hours worked, and as many in ENT are compensated based on productivity this may play a role in how large the gender gap is coming to. In our small data set for this specialty, it’s hard to draw conclusive insights, but we’re interested in seeing how the trends across different factors continue in the future.


Learn more about the average salary and compensation package for ENTs. If you haven’t already, please also consider contributing your anonymous physician salary and compensation data for the year to help us update this section.



The Gender Gap in Pain Management Medicine


Female pain management physicians reported an average salary of $391,000. Male pain management doctors reported 24% higher earnings with an average salary of $486,000.


Our data set was relatively small (79 contributions), but we noted that 25% of our female correspondents reported working for government facilities, while only 10% of male correspondents worked for government facilities or in the military. The salary gap between different practice environments was as high as 55% for our current data, which could help explain at least part of the gender gap in pain management.




The Gender Gap in Pathology


Pathology is another specialty where we saw a reverse gender gap for our current data. Female pathologists reported an average salary of $377,000. Male pathologists reported a 7% lower average salary of $352,000.


We had a small data set (71 contributions) but noted that our female pathologists were more likely to be partners or owners in a practice (15% versus 10%), and partners/owners earned more than double that of their W2 employee colleagues, likely at least in part accounting for the differences in average.




The Gender Gap in Pediatrics


Female pediatricians reported an average salary of $249,000. Male pediatricians reported a 13% higher average salary of $281,000.


As we’ve noted for several specialties above, subspecialization within a specialty often plays a significant role in salaries, which can affect the average salaries when looking at other factors such as gender. Interestingly, when we looked further into the data for pediatric specialties, we didn’t see as large of a range in pay by specialty as we typically do among other specialties.


Other factors such as practice environment and hours worked may also factor in.


Learn more:



The Gender Gap in Physiatry (PM&R)


Female PM&R physicians reported an average salary of $329,000. Male PM&R doctors reported 25% higher earnings with an average salary of $411,000.


We noted that female PM&R doctors were much more likely to work for government facilities such as the VA or city hospitals, while their male colleagues were much more likely to work for a group private practice. With the data we currently have, PM&R doctors working for government facilities earned a staggering 66% less than colleagues in private practice. (We do like to remind doctors that government jobs can offer some great additional benefits, however, including public student loan forgiveness, so it isn’t always an apples to apples comparison when looking just at salaries).


Learn more about:



The Gender Gap in Psychiatry


Female psychiatrists reported an average salary of $313,000. Male psychiatrists reported a 10% higher average salary of $344,000.


When looking further into the data, our distribution among other factors is pretty consistent between the genders:

  • 3% of female psychiatrists are owners and partners in practices, versus 4% for males

  • 23% of female psychiatrists work for academic hospitals, versus 22% for males

  • 30% of female psychiatrists work for government and non-profit institutions, versus 27% for males


The noticeable difference was that 15% of our male members worked locums or as 1099 contractors, while only 4% of our female members did, but this would typically widen the gender gap.


Learn more about:



The Gender Gap in Radiology


Female radiologists reported an average salary of $512,000, which was 5% lower than the average salary of $540,000 reported by male radiologists.


This is one of the smaller gender gaps we’ve seen across specialties. For radiology, we had a higher instance of male physicians reporting being partners or owners in private practices (29% versus 17%) and more female physicians reporting working at academic hospitals (29% versus 19%), which would normally widen the gender gap. Male radiologists also reported a slightly higher average number of hours worked a week than their female colleagues.


We attribute part of the reason that salaries are likely more equal in this dataset to the shared workloads and structures of most private practices in radiology, which are less likely to be compensated in an eat what you kill model rather than a group sharing of profits model. However, as many groups struggle with workforce issues and are offering opportunities for radiologists to pick up more shifts for additional compensation or moving to shift based compensation models, it will be interesting to see if gaps widen.




The Gender Gap in (General) Surgery


For many surgical subspecialties that stem from general surgery, we don’t have enough data to pull together aggregate data yet, and as you can see above, specialty can play a large role in how salaries are determined. Looking at all of these surgical subspecialties grouped together likely wouldn’t provide a useful picture. We hope to add to this section in the future as we compile more data, but the data below reflects only pure general surgery.


Female general surgeons reported an average salary of $460,000. Male general surgeons reported an average 4% higher salary of $479,000.


This is one of the smaller gaps we saw, which may in part reflect the tendency for many general surgeons to be hospital employed.




The Gender Gap in Urgent Care


Like with our emergency medicine physicians above, many of our urgent care doctors reported hourly rates along with salaries, so we looked at the gender gap of their hourly pay.


Female urgent care doctors reported an hourly rate of $156/hour, which was 2% lower than the reported average of $159/hour by their male colleagues, which is one of the lowest gender gaps we’ve seen. We noted when it came to salaries, however, males earned 13% more overall, likely due to the fact that they either worked more hours or had additional pay incentives, such as additional bonuses. We look forward to exploring this more in the future.




The Gender Gap in Urology


Female urologists reported an average salary of $484,000. Male urologists reported 25% higher earnings with an average salary of $601,000. This is a significant difference, but we have too small a dataset to dive deep at this time. We did note, however, that female urologists were more likely to report working for academic hospitals than their male counterparts (53% versus 21%), and academic hospital employees reported 36% lower salaries than colleagues working in private practice or non-academic hospitals. (But again, these positions often offer additional benefits, including potential public student loan forgiveness opportunities.)




Advocate for a Better Salary and Compensation Package


If you think you’re being uncompensated compared to your peers in similar roles, it is never too late to advocate for yourself. Your current employer might not be willing to adjust your compensation (though you won’t know until you ask!), but that doesn’t stop you from exploring other opportunities that could help you bridge the gap.


If you’re looking for a new opportunity, we have a job board that can help you find open positions in your specialty.



When negotiating a new job agreement, we highly recommend working with a local contract attorney who can help you advocate for the best deal possible.


Negotiate for your worth with a contract attorney

If you need guidance on the contract negotiating process, you can also check out:



Conclusion


Given how much the gender gap in wages varies from specialty to specialty, using the overall gender gap across medicine is likely misleading, since so many different factors can determine salaries. A quick overview of the specialties featured above shows how differences in these other factors, such as practice environment and employment type, can play a role and influence salaries because of different trends in jobs that males tend to choose versus females. But even in specialties where the other factors are fairly equal, we typically saw a remaining gap in pay between the genders. We hope with continued transparency in physician compensation and advocacy, that gender gap across specialties will shrink.



Additional Salary and Career Resources for Doctors


Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries: 


If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page.

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