Being a working woman in American society is not easy. The gender pay gap between men and women has been a major issue for many years, but the specific area I want to dig into is the physician assistant profession. Some people might not know what physician assistants even are, so to debrief physician assistants are the doctors assistants. Physician assistants can assist in surgeries, physicians can create patient treatment plans, physicians can be in any specialty they want, and physicians are always under the supervision of a doctor. Women have always earned less than men even if they have worked more hours than their male associates. This is why women physician assistants need to resolve this issue. In the articles “Current status: A profile of the physician assistant profession.” by Hooker, R. S., James F. Cawley, and D. P. Asprey and “Salary Discrepancies Between Practicing Male and Female Physician Assistants” by Bettie Coplan, Alison C. Essary, Thomas B. Virden, James Cawley, James D. Stoehr discusses these issues.
Both of these texts show progress of the gender pay gap over the years, statistics, specific specialities physicians generally choose, and race. Hooker, Cawley, and Everett wrote a section dedicated to explaining the history from different countries in a book about physician assistants. . Also while reading this chapter you do not see any portrayal of emotion and the reader does not see any bias being presented from the authors. This is a more of an ethos approach simply because they provided proper citations and statistics which proves their credibility. Coplan, Essary, Virden, Cawley, and Stoehr start off with a strong statement of how women in the United States who work still earn less than their male associates. While reading the entirety of this article I had seen logos and ethos presented throughout this with all the percentages and the ethical approaches. Which is why the ability to negotiate is a powerful skill to master which is a solution that Hooker, Cawley, and Everett have brought up.
The physician assistant profession was first mainly male dominated from 1965 all the way up to the 1980s. Dr. Eugene Stead was convinced that males will do better as physicians but this was a short lived statement because by 1974 the percentage of female physicians increased 16% (Hooker, Cawley, Everett 44 2010). You can see the evident gender bias and discrimination expressed by some male doctors. Many students who have the academic records to go to medical school decide to go to PA school because it can be more flexible to manage their lifestyles better. It was also reported that married men make more than single men and single women make more than married women. When the authors say this they are not specific if this is just a general statement or whether it is a fact for physicians as well. Women physicians also earn less than male physicians when considering on-call hours, years as a practicing PA, community size, and location. With this lacking a percentage it weakens their claim, which then weakens their ethos that is built up on their evidence and statistics. The power of negotiating is discussed, the authors state “Other considerations to explain the differences may relate to initial starting salaries, the ability to negotiate for raises…” (Hooker, Cawley, Everett 46 2010). Throughout this chapter there has been lack of statistics to strengthen their facts and when discussing other countries they were concise on the information being given. I had only hoped that they would provide more information when talking about other countries.
Coplan, Essary, Virden, Cawley, and Stoehr starts off the article with an impeccable statement “Despite years of progress, women in the United States workforce continue to earn less money than their male counterparts”. During the 1960s the first physician assistants were ex-military and corpsmen and then over the years women started populating the physician assistant profession. This article informs us that in 1983 and then in 1985 Carter and Oliver found the salary inequities between the genders, but fails to provide us with the percentage of just how much disparity there was between male and female physicians. The progress the authors noted from 1992 to 2009 was that male physicians who are practicing family medicine earn five thousand dollars more annually than their female colleagues who are also in family medicine. They also found that the salary difference between male and female physician assistants shows a $14,685 difference in base pay, but failed to mention the year. The reader can admire the authors starting to add actual numbers and statistics with their numbers to make their facts concrete. There were proper findings that explained the ANOVA tables based on age, ethnicity, degree, location, type and source of income, hours worked, and etc. In the article there is a section for each of these discoveries that further explains how they arrived at their answer.
Overall, negotiating is a skill that many women lack. If women were to step up and negotiate like men, showing their employer exactly what they can bring to the table would undoubtedly decrease the gender pay gap. One source that Coplan, Essary, Virden, Cawley, and Stoehr mention is the AAPA which backs up this solution to the problem. But the limitation that is reached with this is that none of the articles actually tested this solution, they just briefly mention negotiating as a solution. Which still leaves us with the question, how can we make the gender pay gap equal between physician assistants?
Bibliography:
- Bettie Coplan, Alison C. Essary, Thomas B. Virden, James Cawley, James D. Stoehr, “Salary Discrepancies Between Practicing Male and Female Physician Assistants”, Women’s Health Issues, Volume 22, Issue 1, 2012, Pages e83-e89,ISSN 1049-3867, https://www.whijournal.com/article/S1049-3867(11)00159-9/fulltext
- Hooker, R. S., JAMES F. Cawley, and Everett M. Christine. “Current status: A profile of the physician assistant profession.” Physician assistants: Policy and practice (2010): 62-100. (book) https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YTAjDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA37&dq=physician+assistant+in+india+wage&ots=XOpRFsoChM&sig=BvL5rsA3bpPbjOjhDF3cJjGpN-w#v=onepage&q=physician%20assistant%20in%20india%20wage&f=false