Becker's Hospital Review

66 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP POPULATION HEALTH Only 1 publicly traded US healthcare company among top 100 in gender rankings By Georgina Gonzalez C ompared to other nations, the U.S. falls behind when it comes to gender equity. In a gender equi- ty ranking of 100 publicly traded companies, only 14 American companies were listed, and only one health- care company made the list, according to a report pub- lished in March. The Equileap report ranks almost 4,000 publicly traded companies using a gender index, including key metrics like gender pay gaps, gender balance of the workforce across various levels and paid leave policies. Together, the analyzed companies employ more than 102 million workers worldwide. The countries with the best companies for gender equi- ty were Sweden, France and the U.K. The U.S., Japan and Hong Kong were among the countries with the weakest gender protection. Among U.S. companies, only 8 percent publicly reported gender pay gap metrics and only 10 percent of U.S. companies analyzed have reached gender balance in the boardroom. Although American companies represented 1,455 of the public organizations analyzed, only 14 of those companies made it onto the top 100 list. Eli Lilly was the only U.S. healthcare company on the list, sit- ting at number 97. Other healthcare companies that made it on the list were AstraZeneca (No. 10), Sanofi (No. 25) and GlaxoSmithKline (No. 51). n Gender pay gap over early career is 10% for academic physicians, study finds By Kelly Gooch D isparities in starting salaries for female and male academic physicians contribute to their earning potential throughout their career, according to a study published Feb. 18 in JAMA Network Open. e cross-sectional study examined data on subspecialty-specific mean compensation and educational debt from the Association of American Medical Colleges. Specifically, the study examined 54,479 U.S. academic physi- cians across 45 subspecialties from July 2019 to June 2020. Researchers estimated start- ing salary, salary in year 10 of employment, annual salary growth rate, and overall earn- ing potential in the first decade of employ- ment for each gender by subspecialty. Overall, women had lower starting salaries in 42 of the subspecialties and lower start- ing salaries in year 10 of employment in 43 of the subspecialties, according to the study. Over the course of the first 10 years of their academic medicine careers, the median earn- ing potential for women in 43 subspecialties was $214,440 — or 10 percent less than their male colleagues. Additionally, researchers found that women had lower mean annual salary growth rates than men in 22 subspecialties, and that de- laying a promotion from assistant to associ- ate professor for one year reduced women's earning potential by a median of $26,042. e researchers said equalizing starting salaries could boost women's earning poten- tial over the first decade of their career by a median of $250,075 in the subspecialties for which there were gender-based differences in starting salaries. "Even when annual salary growth rates were similar for women and men in a subspecialty, the differences in starting salary led to a sub- stantial difference in earning potential within the first 10 years of employment," the research- ers concluded. "Our results highlight that the issue of unequal compensation between the genders is pervasive and exists within nearly all subspecialties." e study had several limitations, includ- ing lack of data about differences in typical debt repayment practices between men and women, as well as using data solely reflecting practice at academic medical centers. n Women had lower starting salaries in 42 of the subspecialties and lower starting salaries in year 10 of employment in 43 of the subspecialties, according to the study.

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