The disparity remains regardless of the women’s academic productivity, specialization, and years on the job.

“These women are at the top of their game,” says Eleni Linos, a professor of dermatology at Stanford University. “They are skilled leaders, outstanding managers, and experienced negotiators who have reached top positions in their medical schools.

“Gender pay gaps are often blamed on women’s personal choices to reduce work hours or leave the workforce, household responsibilities, child care, or suboptimal negotiation skills.

“This study challenges these traditional explanations because our sample of medical department leaders have navigated these complex challenges and broken through the ‘glass ceiling.’ Yet they are still paid less than their male peers when controlling for many factors. Our study shows the pervasiveness of gender inequities at all levels of academic medicine,” Linos says.

As reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers surveyed publicly available salary information from 29 public medical schools in 12 states. They compared the average salaries in 2017 of 550 chairs of clinical departments. About one-sixth of the chairs were women, who, the researchers found, earned about $80,000 less per year than their male counterparts.

“When you adjust for all these factors, you still see a pay gap,” Linos says. “This calls into question the common explanations for gender disparities and highlights a pervasive structural problem that needs to be addressed. Women are regularly paid less than men, even at the highest levels of academic medicine”

Read the full article about gender pay gap by Krista Conger at Futurity.