Gender Pay Gap in Nursing: 2017 Salary Survey vs. 2015?
Over the past couple of years, several studies and surveys have revealed that there is a gender gap in nursing salaries. Published in 2016, an allnurses.com survey yielded results also showing the wage gap with men making more per hour than their female coworkers.
NursesGeneral NursingVideoSalary Survey
In 2015 The Journal of American Medicine released a study on the pay gap between male and female nurses. That survey revealed that male nurses earn about $5100 per year more than women. This survey sparked much interest and dialog as to the reasons for this disparity.
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The new analysis, which included data on more than 290,000 registered nurses, also found that the pay gap had not narrowed within workplace settings and specialties from 1988 to 2013. The new study is the first to have measured gender disparities in pay among nurses over time.
Published in 2016, an allnurses.com survey yielded results also showing the wage gap with men making more per hour than their female coworkers. Is it just about gender or are there other variables that factor into the results?
Women make up 92% of the nursing workforce while men hold only 7.74%, as noted in the allnurses. com 2015 survey. The majority of nurses at the time were paid hourly, 80%, in fact. Men tended toward specialty areas like anesthesiology (with 41% of nurse anesthetists being men), cardiac care, critical care and Emergency room care. The AMA study found that approximately 40 percent of nurse anesthetist are men and were paid on the average $17,290 more annually than female nurse anesthetists.
It seems that one of the main factors that may influence the gender wage gap is that woman take time off to care for family and children. When they return to the workforce they often come back at generally the same pay grade while men have continued working and have received hourly wage increases along the way.
Women are also more apt to regulate their work hours. They seek out opportunities for a more traditional 9-5 nursing job or a shorter work week, again to meet the needs of work/family balance. Men are more likely to take "off hour" opportunities for higher pay and have more overtime on a regular basis.
In the 2017 allnurses Salary Survey nurses were asked to provide the number of regular hours they work per week as well as how many hours of paid overtime they average per week. This data, as well as a breakdown by gender, could shed some additional light on the gender gap in salary.
Men are also known to negotiate salary increases and higher pay rates than women. This accounts for some of the higher wage per hour values noted.
As we are nearing the release of the current (2017) allnurses.com salary results, it will be interesting to see if the gender gap has narrowed over the past year and what the variables will look like! What are some of your thoughts on this finding?
The complete results including interactive graphs are posted now in these 2 articles:
