COM Outlook Spring 2019

“I sincerely apologize to all female physicians for my comments and the pain they have caused,” he said in a statement. “My response sounds horrible and doesn’t reflect what I was really trying to say. I’m not saying female physicians should be paid less, but they earn less because of other factors.” Female physicians have made significant advances over the past several decades, with women now com- prising more than one third of the physician workforce and nearly half of all physicians-in-training. Unfortu- nately, while it is easy to dismiss the comments of one male physician as a random outlier of opinion, evi- dence to the contrary abounds. For example, female physicians earn significantly less than their male peers regardless of where they live or their medical specialty. According to a recent survey by Doximity—a social networking service for health care professionals—the pay gap for female physicians in the United States is growing. The survey revealed women earned an average of 16 percent less a year than their male counterparts did in 2017. In April 2018, Medscape’s Physician Compen- sation Report exposed the concerning fact that the sizable gender pay gap is increasing for primary care physicians. When you factor in pay for specialists, the gender gap widens to a disturbing 36 percent. Several causes have been cited to explain the widen- ing compensation imbalance, including specialty choice, years of experience, number of hours worked, choices made to balance work and family, and the lack of role models and mentors. Interestingly, researchers find these disparities even when they are monitoring for the aforementioned factors. ADDING FUEL TO THE INEQUITY FIRE In November 2018, Reuters reported that Tokyo Medical University—one of Japan’s top medical schools—spent at least a decade purposely lowering women’s entrance exam scores to ensure that some of them were unable to attend the prestigious school. The university’s administration recently took steps to rectify this egregiously discriminatory practice by offering spots to 101 female applicants who were wrongly denied entrance in the past two years. Still, the fact that the medical school acknowledged lowering exam grades of female applicants to keep the percentage of female students lower than men illustrates the enormous inequities that still exist for female physicians worldwide. To gain a clearer understanding of why these archaic attitudes still exist at a time when we, as a society, are supposed to be more enlightened than ever, COM Outlook enlisted the input of several of its alumnae and female faculty members. Their insights reveal a wealth of opinion on why these attitudes still exist and what can be done to help elicit change. NSU ALUMNA WEIGHS INTO THE DISCUSSION Tigges’ comments prompted 2004 KPCOM alumna Katarina Lindley, D.O., FACOFP, to share details of her extraordinarily busy life. “There was recently an article by a male physician in Dallas saying how female physi- cians do not work that hard, and that is why they get paid less. It’s 11:17 p.m. on a Tuesday, and I just got home from my office,” she posted on her Facebook page. “I saw my children this morning for 45 minutes before I dropped them at school, and then their nanny “I own a private practice, work 8 shifts a month in an urgent care facility, and do 30 hours of telemedicine each week.” —Katarina Lindley, D.O., FACOFP 6 | DR. KIRAN C. PATEL COLLEGE OF OSTEOPATHIC MEDICINE BATTLING BIAS continued from page 5