Male Chauvinism in Nursing Industry? Men Getting Paid More Than Women
Male Nurses are paid more than Female Nurses: Male Chauvinism?
"If you thought nursing was immune to the downturn, think again. The poor economy is keeping us working longer than we'd anticipated," said Nursing Management editor-in-chief Richard Hader, "and in addition to wage cuts, organizations are freezing or eliminating retirement benefits, further negatively impacting employee morale."
A new analysis concluded that male registered nurses are earning more than female registered nurses across settings, specialities and positions, and this gap has not narrowed over time. Even after the enforcement of the Equal Pay Act 50 years ago, double standards have been maintained when it comes to the payment of wages to the medical class.
Previous studies have found that male registered nurses (RN's) have higher salaries than female registered nurses. In the new study, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, sought to investigate what employment factors could explain these salary differences using recent data.
The researchers analyzed nationally representative data from the last six quadrennial National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses studies (1988-2008; including 87,903 RNs) and data from the American Community Survey (2001-13; including 205,825 RNs). In both studies, the proportion of men in the sample was 7%.
In ambulatory care the salary gap was $7,678 and in hospital settings it was $3,873. The smallest pay gap was found in chronic care ($3,792) and the largest was in cardiology ($6,034). The only specialty in which no significant pay gap between men and women RNs was detected was orthopaedics. The salary difference was also found to extend across the range of positions, including roles such as middle management and nurse anaesthetists.
"The role of RN's are expanding with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the emphasis on team-based care delivery", the report read. In some of the surveys that were carried out the average salary fell by $4,000 between 2007 and 2010. In the same survey, almost 60% of nurse leaders felt that they were not receiving appropriate compensation for their level of organizational responsibility.
However, the survey concluded that: A salary gap by gender is especially important in nursing because this profession is the largest in health care and is predominantly female, affecting about 2.5 million women. These results may motivate nurse employers, including physicians, to examine their pay structure and act to annihilate the existing inequalities.
