Male vs. Female pay gap even in nursing

Ruby Vee, BSN · Mar 27, 2015

My husband and I are both nurses. We worked in the same ICU of a major university teaching hospital -- I was there 15 years, him for 20. I had 25 years of total ICU experience, he had 20. Or thereabouts. Nursing was his third career, my first. As far as education -- I have a Master's, he has a diploma. We made about the same money. Not enough disparity to quibble about -- he made slightly more which we both understood was because he had been at the institution five years longer.

Then, for family reasons, we quit our jobs and moved three thousand miles to the other coast. We were both hired at the same hospital, in the same unit, same salary. (Bear in mind that I have five years more experience, a higher degree, had a resume that included founding an LVAD team, teaching various nursing classes, chairing a committee, writing journal articles, etc. He didn't even have a resume.) We were both told that we were being hired into level 2 positions (level 1 being new grads) but would be promoted after one year into the fourth level assuming that we joined a committee, completed a project, taught a class -- jumped through 3 or four hoops.

DH went to work every day, worked his shift and came home. He announced to anyone who would listen that he had no intention of jumping through the hoops. I joined two committees, completed a project, taught a few classes and co-authored a journal article. At the end of a year, he was promoted into the fourth level with a substantial pay increase. I was told "keep doing what you're doing and we'll see about promoting you next year." Each year's pay increase is a percentage based on current salary. Each year, he gets a pay increase based on the substantial pay increase he got at the end of our first year. After a few years, his salary was quite a bit higher than mine.

Then we got a new manager. I learned that the previous manager had overpaid all the men in the unit when measured against women who were equally (or more) qualified. The men were told that they would have to start producing more in order to justify their higher salaries and rungs on the clinical ladder. Complete projects, chair committees, teach classes -- jump through the hoops they were supposed to have jumped through to earn the promotions and salary increases. Or they could volunteer to be demoted with lower salary. Some started producing more. Some left. I got a promotion and substantial pay increase.

I am probably the only woman on that unit who was in a position to know exactly what one of the men brought home. But it was very clear to me from the start that the particular institution had a pronounced gender gap. The gender gap still exists at that hospital but not, I am very happy to say, in our unit. I love my manager!