Although Women Dominate the Nursing Profession, Do Men Make More Money?
According to our 2015 Salary Survey, although 92% of the nursing workforce are female, male nurses make more. We will have more details from AN’s survey of over 18,000 nurses on June 14th when we release results including interactive graphs.
Male nurses make $5000/year more across all specialties than their female counterparts. This was proven in our survey as well. And more importantly WHY? USA Today has an interesting take on this. They theorize that women frequently leave the workforce to care for children or family issues. When they return to work, they typically return to the same salary/hourly rate that they left with while men, who traditionally don't take time off from work for child care, continue up the salary scale. AN has had discussions also about the earnings disparity.
Another thread, from 2011, Male Nurses on the Rise and they Make More Money provides us with more possible reasons for this disparity: men work more overtime hours, men work more off-shifts and more males work in the higher acuity units like ICU and ER. Some members also pointed out that males seem more willing to try to negotiate for a higher salary when hired.
So, let's get some more input - why do you think male nurses earn more than female nurses?
For the last two decades, even though my husband has been a stay at home dad and student for the last four years and his previous work was seasonal and often under the table, my statement continued up until just this last year to put me as earning way less a month in social security as my husband would.
We both started working at around age fifteen and started out with minimum wage jobs until we became adults. Has anyone else noticed this..?
And I did take two years off for my first child but couldn't afford to take time off with the second so...
I guess that doesn't make much sense unless his contributions were higher than yours. If they were equivalent then I wouldn't be happy with that.
I'll have to see if I come up on the study I saw a while back on nursing pay by gender. There was a difference but I think they showed that makes were working more hours, in specialties that paid more. I know when my husband's employer was handing out insane bonuses for extra shifts, almost all the guys were maxing out, working as many hours as was permitted (hubs was averaging 48-60 hours/week). Some of the women were participating, but the guys were all over that. Me?
I did a quick survey of my coworkers, on a specialty unit in the South.
We consist of 30% men, 70% women.
Our unit pays based by years of experience, on a pay scale. However, if you work on your clinical ladder, you can earn more via bonuses.
Of the male nurses, 71% of us are actively working on our clinical ladders, while only 19% of the females are.
The top of the clinical ladder is worth $6000 a year extra.
It appears that 42% of the male nurses are the sole earners for their families, while there seems to be a debate among the women polled whether or not one or two of their fellow female nurses are the sole income earners (~6% to 12%).
All of the men working on their clinical ladders are doing it to raise their net income, and increase future earning potential. I did not ask the females working on their ladders so pointedly, so I cannot accurately speak to their motivations.
It would seem that, on my unit, men are earning more because they are actively seeking to increase their earnings.
Although haven't formally studied this issue and I am loathe to offend any sensibilities: I do strongly suspect that males, in general, give birth at a sharply lower rate than females.
Further, my own anecdotal experience has been that after getting married and having a couple children, men tend to become stay at home moms at a drastically reduced rate as compared to women.
Further, I have noticed a definite trend that men, when they stop working at a job, get paid a rate generally on par with women who aren't working that job as well.
All this, if course, in only my personal "lived experience".....
MikeFromMT said:
How long are we going to keep beating this horse?
I just posted this in the other thread.
Men tend to make more money based upon the hours they work, both amount and time of day, as well as being willing to leave one job for a better paying one, women tend to work fewer hours and will stay in a job they like for less pay rather than risk their comfort for what's behind door number three. This has been well documented in several studies.
Even in my personal life this is true, my wife wants 5 shifts per pay period in exchange for a guarantee of steady work but lower pay, I work relief where I can self schedule, I get a higher base pay but am also the first to be called off for low census, even with my call offs I still take home substantially more money than she does. I also am willing to go in on days off if we are short staffed. She isn't.
Every time this topic comes up, people make these same arguments, but there have been repeated studies that have found that, even when you control for all these kinds of variables, women are still making significantly less than men.
From the 2016 update of the AAUW report, The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap:
"Yet not all of the gap can be "explained away." After accounting for college major, occupation, economic sector, hours worked, months unemployed since graduation, GPA, type of undergraduate institution, institution selectivity, age, geographical region, and marital status, Graduating to a Pay Gap found that a 7 percent difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates one year after graduation was still unexplained.
Similarly, Behind the Pay Gap found a 12 per cent unexplained difference in earnings among full-time workers 10 years after college graduations. Other researchers have also found that the gender pay gap is not fully accounted for by women's and men's choices."
From the Council of Economic Advisers Issue Brief, Gender Pay Gap: Recent Trends and Explanations, April 2015:
"Yet even when we ignore these forms of discrimination and hold education, experience, employment gaps due to children, occupation, industry, and job title constant, there is a pay gap. This "unexplained" pay gap leaves little beyond discrimination to explain it. Some research has found that this unexplained portion is a sizeable share of the total gap – 41 percent."
As a single person, and therefore the only income earner, it peeves me that organizations are most likely offering lesser hourly wages to people based on gender. Of course, I will never know for sure as I don't work in a unionized facility, and we have this bulls*** rule that we cannot discuss our pay with other coworkers.
The study you cited is a generic study of pay gap throughout all professions. This thread is nursing specific. Hospitals have pay scales for nurses, not one scale for male nurses and another for female nurses. If you hired 2 new grad nurses for your unit, one male and one female, you start them out at the same pay rate. 10 yrs later if they are still working in the same unit and the same job then their pay rate will be equal.
The study you cited is a generic study of pay gap throughout all professions. This thread is nursing specific. Hospitals have pay scales for nurses, not one scale for male nurses and another for female nurses. If you hired 2 new grad nurses for your unit, one male and one female, you start them out at the same pay rate. 10 yrs later if they are still working in the same unit and the same job then their pay rate will be equal.
I agree. While there might be a little bit of pay discrimination sometimes ... I don't think it is rampant in nursing. I think the "usual explanations" -- for the increased pay for men apply. Men nurses tend to be more career-focused, more likely to seek advancement, take less time off, etc.
However, I do think that there is some bias toward men on the hiring side. Having been involved in hiring for many years, I have seen that some people make a special effort to give men and other minorities a chance when it comes to hiring -- or being lenient when it comes to discipline and/or termination. They don't want to appear biased against them, so they make sure they are being "extra fair" when considering a man or minority candidate. Your average woman doesn't get that "extra fairness" as much. Also, some people believe that having men in front-line leadership positions reduces the amount of "catty-ness" among the staff. A little favorable bias there can help a man get on a positive career trajectory early in his career.
I once served on an admissions committee to a large state university school of nursing. Admissions were based on a point system. The people with the most points got accepted. All men and all minorities were automatically awarded an extra point in the process. Working for a hospital, I have had HR tell me that a certain percentage of my hires had to be a minority of some kind (men included in that minority group).
As a single person and therefore the only income earner, it peeves me that organizations are most likely offering lesser hourly wages to people based on gender. Of course, I will never know for sure as I don't work in a unionized facility, and we have this bulls*** rule that we cannot discuss our pay with other coworkers.
Is there any substantive evidence anywhere that organisations offer less to equally qualified women? With the frequency that this comes up, one would expect some more concrete evidence other than some incidental/anecdotal claims. I have no doubt that discrimination based on all kinds of things happens periodically- that is different from a systemic problem.
1 anecdotal data point: I recently signed a work agreement with certain pay stipulations. The hospital accidentally gave me a bit more than they meant to. I was essentially asked if I might consider lower compensation- I wasn't really pressured, it was just thrown out there as a option. I politely declined. Had my boss indicated it was really important to her, or reflected poorly on her, I might have considered agreeing as I look more at long term relationships than a couple hundred dollars at a time.
I thought this was a really weird approach. Barring a really good reason, why would I agree to less money? When I relayed this to my wife, she suggested that maybe this approach was more effective on women- that a woman would be more inclined to maintain peace and harmony by giving up some money.
In most hiring situations, pay is fixed based on objective criteria of which gender is not included. In some hiring situations there is a degree of negotiation. Are men and women considered equal negotiators? Is it possible men are more likely to advocate for themselves?
And- Regarding prohibition against discussing pay. Pretty sure that's not legal. So is the federal government:
The clear message for employers: Say no to prohibiting workers from discussing pay and compensation. The law errs on the side of protecting employees' right to concerted activity.
Women do not generally negotiate the same way. It's cultural, even within our generally equal society. In that podcast I referenced, the female professor relayed a story of her own. She was going to participate in a conference with several experts. She assumed all were volunteering. Later she found out the male participants had asked for a stipend. She was shocked that she, an expert in female employment issues, had fallen into these same ways of sabotaging herself.
Salary surveys that use "annual salary" are worthless because there are way too many variables to consider them valid. Both Bill and Hillary have 5yrs experience in the ER. Is it fair to compare Bill who works at a Level I trauma center in a high cost of living area where he works nights, many weekends, and a lot of overtime to Hillary who works in a rural county ER with low cost of living in which she works days, no overtime and few weekends? Bill makes $30k/yr. more than Hillary, see the pay gap? Even if they worked in the same hospital there could be a big pay difference.
How can a survey eliminate the variability of night and weekend differential, overtime worked, holidays worked, location pay difference, and weekend only bonus pay?
Stubborn Pay Gap is Found in Nursing: Males Earn $5100 more/Yr Details a JAMA study released in March 2015 which was partially compiled by census data. Several posters in this thread agreed with all these findings by providing anecdotal incidents."
I can easily earn $5000/yr more than the previous year depending on number of holidays, amount of extra shifts (with $10/hr bonus pay), and overtime I work. Is it possible to have a pay gap between myself?
Beyond that, we're all on the same pay scale which hourly rate is determined solely by longevity.
Interesting point, I wonder if you found the confounding principle to their poorly designed study. I always wondered where they got this whacked research from. Nurses get paid job rate at any of the hospitals where I have worked. Black, white, green, male, female, other ..... job rate, all of them. I would be interested to see the hourly rate in each of these studies, not just the annual salary.
Specializes in Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Surgical.
Feminist here: it's well known that men, even in nursing, are more likely to negotiate for higher starting wages, will probably be offered more money after said negotiation, may be offered more to start by HR because they are a minority, may enter the field with more advanced degrees (BSN/MSN), and are more likely to hit the more 'technical' specialties (all the guys I know, work psych, ED, cardiac, ICU, may offer more money after several years' experience) and they more quickly advance in leadership.
Of course, gender-blind union contracts may eradicate these tendencies.
That being all said, personally, I don't mind working the nights with most guys, they tend to be even-keeled and team-oriented, and leave any personal drama at home.
TiffyRN, BSN, PhD
2,318 Posts
I guess that doesn't make much sense unless his contributions were higher than yours. If they were equivalent then I wouldn't be happy with that.
I'll have to see if I come up on the study I saw a while back on nursing pay by gender. There was a difference but I think they showed that makes were working more hours, in specialties that paid more. I know when my husband's employer was handing out insane bonuses for extra shifts, almost all the guys were maxing out, working as many hours as was permitted (hubs was averaging 48-60 hours/week). Some of the women were participating, but the guys were all over that. Me?