Fitz and fellow classmates:
Imagine for every 84 cents a person makes, someone else doing the exact same job makes one dollar. That is what the women in the medical field have to deal with on a daily basis. In order to make the same amount as another gender for the same work, women would have to spend 42 of their personal days to earn the money they should’ve already been given. In addition to that, there are exactly zero specialties in which women are paid the same amount as men. However, there are more women in the medical field than men and women typically work harder and have more efficiency in their work. Although some might say that women are just finding lower-paying jobs, women are being discriminated against and have fewer job opportunities compared to men. After all, they are just being disregarded and put at a disadvantage because of their gender. In the United States, there needs to be equal pay in the medical field for women.
Though the number of men used to dominate in the medical field, recently, more and more women have been joining and, ultimately, have outnumbered the men, yet women are still getting paid less money. Based on an article by The Washington Post, “For the first time, women make up the majority of students in U.S. medical schools. In 2019, 46,878 medical school students (50.5 percent) are women and 45,855 (49.4 percent) are men, according to a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).” Now that women are making up the majority of the students in medical school, there is no reason that they are still getting paid the amount that they are in comparison to men. Giving the fewer group of people in the medical field more money without proper and correct reasoning is a factless idea. These students in medical school will go on to save many people’s lives in the future, so giving the women in it a lack of appreciation because of the pay gap is horrendous. This proposition is also shown by an article by World Health Organization when it states, “Women represent around 70% of the health workforce, but earn on average 28% less than men.” This means that out of every 10 people in the medical field seven are women, and those seven women are getting paid less than three-fourths of the money that the three men are making. There needs to be a big change to the distribution of the money going to genders in the medical field.
Even without equal pay, women are working longer hours and statistically doing better at their job than men. Without a doubt, that is not morally right. When women are working better than men, they should be uplifted and not disregarded just because they are female. This is proven when a Harvard Business Review claims, “These differences are especially notable – and disappointing – given that female physicians actually outperform male physicians in some areas; one study of 1.5 million Medicare hospitalizations found that female doctors’ patients had significantly lower mortality and fewer rehospitalizations.” To summarize, fewer patients of women are dying and are doing better than men’s patients and fewer are having to go back to the hospital after treatment. This indicates that the work that the women are doing is more effective and more helpful to their patients than men. Why pay an entire working group of people that influence the lives of people in countless ways less than they deserve? An article from News and Events says, “…female PCPs[primary care physicians] placed more orders, documented more diagnoses, and spent 2.4 minutes (15.7 percent) longer with their patients.” Women did more with their time than men while still being able to spend 15.7% more of their time with patients. This makes known that they would have had to work more hours than men. Wouldn’t you want to reward the people that are working better and not discourage them by paying them less?
Some can argue that women seek out lower-paying jobs and men are more likely to get higher-paying jobs. That may be true, nevertheless, that is because of discrimination against their gender, leaving their only being options for lower-paying jobs. Women have fewer job opportunities than men just because they are female. Despite that, in the article “Closing the Gender Pay Gap in Medicine,” by AAMC, “Women often find more career opportunities in lower-paying specialties. According to AAMC specialty data, 63% of pediatricians are women, whereas 95% of orthopedic surgeons are men.” Many claim that that is the reason that there isn’t equal pay. That it is just because men get higher-paying jobs. However, that is not completely true. A working paper by the World Health Organization states, “The remaining pay differential of 11.2% could be attributable to a wide array of factors, including women’s underrepresentation in senior positions, fewer opportunities for career advancement, and gender discrimination. Using data from European countries, the analysis showed that male physicians are more than twice as likely as females to be in the highest income category.” Even if women get into the highest positions, they still feel silenced and misunderstood, because no man in that same position knows the struggles she must’ve gone through to get there. Being one of the only women in a room full of men could feel disheartening. Seeing no others that sympathize and are like you can tear someone’s confidence down. Furthermore, Sarah Parangi, an MD [doctor in medicine] at Harvard Medical School, claims, “‘More women are choosing to become pediatricians than are choosing to become neurosurgeons, that’s true,’ says Parangi. ‘But the gap persists within specialty, too, especially in male-dominated specialties like neurosurgery where women aren’t just a minority, they’re almost an anomaly’” (AAMC). Clearly, women are not valued even in needed workplaces, especially if they are considered an “anomaly” in specific fields of medicine. There is no rational reasoning for women to have to deal with the injustices happening in the medical field purely because of gender. Women and men are getting pushed apart financially and creating gaps in the possibility of equality.
Women should be getting paid equally in the medical field because it is a female-dominated workplace, women work longer and better than men, and regardless of men outnumbering women in higher-paying jobs, women don’t get the opportunity to get those jobs. An article from Becker’s Hospital Review says, “Women are 19 percent less likely to be formally assessed than men.” After all, the least the workplace could do is properly assess women. However, people still treat women without courtesy. No matter how hard a woman can work, she will never be put on the same level as a man if there is still a pay gap between genders. It is extremely important for there to be equal pay for women in the medical field. Because without it, women will never be fully respected. Let’s stop wasting time on gender discrimination because the focus should be on the work itself, not the gender of the people behind it.
Thank you for your time.
So I talk a lot… 