New Study Finds Female Physicians Earn Just 78 Cents for Every Dollar Paid to Men, Equaling a $3.3M Lifetime Earnings Gap

Even after accounting for specialty, experience, hours worked, schedules & shifts, and location effects, a significant pay gap persists, according to new research from Marit Health

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Female physicians earn just 78 cents for every dollar earned by their male peers, according to a new nationwide analysis from Marit Health, a physician-focused pay transparency platform. Over the course of a 30-year career, that disparity adds up to $3.3 million in lower total earnings for women in medicine, highlighting one of the largest gender pay gaps in the U.S. labor market.

The study, based on more than 14,000 full-time physician pay reports, finds that differences in specialty choice explain about half of the gap. An additional 24% is explained by differences in other factors such as employer type, compensation structure, practice locations, shifts & schedules, etc. However, even after controlling for these factors, female physicians still earn seven percent less in total compensation than male physicians in comparable roles.

“Most people assume medicine rewards training and performance equally,” said Vikas Sabnani, CEO and cofounder of Marit Health. “But our data shows a gender pay gap in two ways. First, there is structural: specialty choice, employer setting, and schedules can have enormous lifetime consequences, not because the work in some specialties matters less, but because the system pays far more for surgical specialties than for non-procedural specialties, like Pediatrics. The second is harder to accept: even after controlling for many measurable factors, we still see a remaining unexplained gap in total compensation between male and female physicians. A patient encounter is reimbursed the same regardless of the physician’s gender, and medical school costs the same, so this gap is not just unfair, it changes the financial trajectory of an entire career in medicine.”The Gap Persists beyond Base Salary

This gender pay gap persists beyond just salary and total compensation. For physicians purely on productivity-based models, the study found that there is a 6% difference in wRVU (Work Relative Value Units) conversion rates between Male & Female physicians and an 18% difference in signing bonuses, even after controlling for other factors.

“When women physicians earn millions less over a career despite doing comparable work, the issue isn’t individual choices, it’s a system that consistently undervalues women’s labor,” said Hala Sabry, D.O., M.B.A., an emergency medicine physician and founder of Physician Moms Group (PMG), the largest community of women physicians in the world. Dr. Sabry is also the creator of National Women Physicians Day. “This study shows that even when women do everything ‘right,’ the gap remains. Salary transparency and equity isn’t about fairness alone; it’s about career longevity, physician retention, and the future of our healthcare workforce.”

Specialty Choice Associated With the Largest Share of the Gap

Medical specialty rose to the top as the single largest factor associated with pay differences. Female physicians are significantly underrepresented in the highest-paying specialties and subspecialties, including neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, cardiology, and radiology, where total compensation frequently exceeds $600,000 annually, and fewer than 20% of physicians are women. By contrast, women are overrepresented in lower-paying specialties such as family medicine, pediatrics, endocrinology, and obstetrics and gynecology.

Employer type also plays a significant role

Differences in employer types female and male physicians choose is associated with 18% of the pay gap. Female physicians are more likely to work in academic and public-sector settings, which tend to pay less than private practice. Females are also substantially less likely to report ownership income, a key driver of higher physician compensation. Male physicians are almost twice as likely as females to report K-1 income: 1.7% of female physicians versus 3.3% of male physicians report K-1 income.

Female physicians are also more likely to prioritize employers that offer better parental leave benefits: 93% of female physicians report having access to parental leave compared to 79% of male physicians. However, our analysis suggests that employers that offer better parental leave benefits tend to offer slightly lower pay than others.

Differences in bonuses and additional cash income compound equality

Bonuses and other non-salary cash income account for another 6% of the overall pay gap, with women earning significantly less in productivity bonuses and leadership-related incentives. While men and women are equally likely to hold academic roles, female physicians are 14% less likely to report leadership responsibilities.

Lower Pay, Lower Satisfaction

Female physicians also report lower satisfaction with their compensation. Just 46% of women say they are satisfied or very satisfied with their pay, compared to 52% of men.

“There are multiple ways in which our traditional way of paying physicians – of valuing the work that they do – limits women’s opportunity to earn,” said Amy S. Gottlieb, MD, a nationally recognized expert in fair pay strategy, Editor of Closing the Gender Pay Gap in Medicine: A Roadmap for Healthcare Organizations and the Women Physicians Who Work For Them, and a Marit physician advisor. “To achieve fair compensation, institutions must pay attention to practices that impact how women are assessed, promoted, and rewarded for their contributions. As a profession and a society, we will also have to identify, acknowledge, and correct gender biases that lurk within payor mechanisms like RVU’s. Until all these systems-based changes happen, women physicians must equip themselves with knowledge about compensation benchmarks to support them being paid fairly. Marit provides this critical data.”

The entire study is available here.

About Marit Health

Marit is the fastest-growing community in medicine. Built by clinicians and for clinicians, Marit helps physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) thrive in their careers. Marit offers a community-powered anonymous salary-sharing platform for medicine, which is the largest, most comprehensive, and most up-to-date source of clinician compensation data of its kind, and always free; along with an AI-powered job search built exclusively for medicine. Tens of thousands of physicians and APPs are using Marit every month to view compensation benchmarks, find the right opportunities, and advocate for themselves. For more information, visit marithealth.com.

Media Contact

Amanda Woolley, Marit Health, 1 3603191738, media@marithealth.com, https://www.marithealth.com/ 

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SOURCE Marit Health

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