As a fourth year student in her last few weeks of medical school, I recently found myself in an interesting new course: negotiation skills for graduating medical students. As part of a push from accrediting organizations like the LCME, the final weeks of our medical education are being devoted to lesser-taught subjects in medicine: licensure processes, malpractice, wellness and resiliency training, and contract negotiations. At the start of the lecture, a female friend turned to me and sarcastically quipped, “now we’ll learn why women in medicine make less than men.” I laughed, but the comment stuck with me, and I listened intently to the rest of the day’s lecture hoping to catch some hint of the topic to which my colleague referred.
In 2015, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research published an alarming statistic: on average, women made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men. Even more alarming was the fact that when the study controlled for qualification or stratified by job title, the gender wage gap persisted. Unfortunately, medicine is not immune to the gender wage gap phenomenon. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, women make up one-third of U.S. physicians, but on average make only 69 cents for every dollar earned by their male colleagues. This results in over $56,000 in potential wages lost for women in medicine each year.
In response to these statistics, researchers and policy makers are making efforts to identify underlying causes and possible solutions to the gender wage gap issue. Social science research has suggested that a major barrier to women’s advancement in the workplace is their reluctance to engage in the negotiation space, and negotiation skills have been targeted as key tools to help improve work equity and parity. As a result, a ton of energy has been poured into the question: “Why don’t women negotiate?”
Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
No comments:
Post a Comment