This is a watershed moment for women in the workplace. We finally have the floor for our voices to be heard and an opportunity to end workplace inequity. Women are paid less for the same work compared with men, an observation that is true across different jobs and socioeconomic strata. Cardiology is no exception.
Based on a study published in 2016,1 women cardiologists, on average, earn 7.3% less than their male peers after accounting for productivity and subspecialties. This result should come as no surprise; multiple publications have documented similar findings.2,3 However, simply stating the difference in annual salary fails to capture the true scope of the wage discrimination faced by women in cardiology. While a wage gap early in a career may seem small, the effect of the discrepancy snowballs over time. Consider the following hypothetical assumptions: