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When we talk about equal pay, it is for the identical classification/job, etc. One cannot compare a teacher with a carpenter or a plumber, nor try to establish which is more skilled or more important. Education is only one component.

Each occupation pays what the market will bear and what it takes to attract people into that occupation. Skill, education and working conditions are all factors and the pay needs to reflect what it takes to attract workers to that job. We cannot have equal pay across a variety of job classifications. It simply cannot work that way.

FYI (19 months ago in The Globe and Mail)

Female surgeons in Ontario earn 24 per cent less than their male counterparts for each hour they spend operating, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Surgery on Wednesday, found these disparities exist even in a fee-for-service system, which is considered less gender-biased than salary-based systems. Despite this, women in all specialty areas are more likely to do procedures that pay less, the researchers found.

Within general surgery, for example, women performed more operations such as cyst removal and biopsies, while their male counterparts did more lucrative procedures such as gastric bypasses, said one of the authors, Fahima Dossa, a surgical resident at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Dossa suggest one reason may be that women choose or are pushed into less lucrative specialties, and less lucrative procedures within specialties. She also said female surgeons likely get fewer referrals over all than their male counterparts, and those they do get tend to be on the lower-paying end.

“It looks like women are having fewer opportunities to do the more higher-paying procedures,” Dr. Dossa said in an interview. “There’s often this [view] that women are choosing these things. Women are choosing these specialties, and choosing to do certain types of procedures. But I can assure you women are not choosing consciously to make less money.”

Nancy Baxter, a general surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and an author of the study, said female surgeons may also be less aggressive when it comes to billing.

“A lot of time, [the gender gap] gets attributed to the women; so the women aren’t working hard enough, the women aren’t choosing the right specialties,” Dr. Baxter said. “What you see here is it’s not the women, it’s the system. So if the system is giving to women procedures that are worth less per hour, we have to fix the system.”

The research team, led by St. Michael’s Hospital, compared the earnings of female and male surgeons using data from the non-profit research institute ICES, formerly known as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. It looked at more than 1.5 million elective surgical procedures performed on adult patients by 3,275 surgeons in Ontario in eight specialties between January, 2014, and December, 2016.

Based on the amount paid for the procedures and the time it takes to do them, the researchers found over all that male surgeons earned $300.86 an hour on average, compared with $214.59 an hour for female surgeons. When they compared female surgeons with their male counterparts within each specialty, they found male surgeons earned $24.63 more an hour in general surgery, $73.73 more an hour in orthopedic surgery, and $79.39 more an hour in cardiothoracic surgery. In gynecology, even though female surgeons outnumber males, male surgeons earned $22.92 more an hour.

In almost all cases, female and male surgeons took the same amount of time to perform identical procedures, so the researchers noted the differences cannot be explained by women taking longer.

Thanks JenE. It is extremely hard for men to accept the fact that they have been extremely unfair and "prejudice" towards females. Even though circumstances on the whole are fairer than they were in previous decades, they still aren't on a level playing field.

You are absolutely correct. Specialists in the medical field are paid more if they are males...doing exactly the same job. Many women don't complain because they are making a good salary and are just accepting as it is better than it used to be.

It is true, there are an equivalent amount of graduates if not more female diploma earners in medicine and law. Less in Engineering. I wonder how many more men there are than women that are High School Principals. I wonder how many more huge business are headed with female CEO's. I wonder how many more women than men are heads of government. We do not need to wonder. The facts are the facts. We all know. Are those males more qualified........give your head a shake.

Many of you, all of you must know someone, friend, some relative that has a daughter who is a head of a department, that is a head engineer in her field of expertise , the head of a medical institution, a high school principal etc. And they brag about it. They know it is not the norm.

Yes, you can say that men need physical strength to do some jobs that most women just cannot do. But what about in all those fancy restaurants up until a few years ago. Do you remember women as your waiter. No, the women were relegated to the diners. Those waiters made or make huge tips. Could women do that job just as effectivelyÉ Of course. Oh yes, and the Mai tre de ( spelling), always a man in the fine dining restaurant, collecting half of the waiters tips versus the (hostess) in the diner maybe getting 10%. But you know what they say about words that end in ess or ette..... meaning essentially little so not as worthy. Hostess, Dinette, Majorette .... do these words come to mind.

Not to worry, I do not think many women want to take over the world. As many (Trump, Putin) .They want to be respected and accepted for their talents and for the contributions they do or can make in this world.

What we will talk about........when interest rates are so darn low!!!

JenE said
FYI (19 months ago in The Globe and Mail)

Female surgeons in Ontario earn 24 per cent less than their male counterparts for each hour they spend operating, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Surgery on Wednesday, found these disparities exist even in a fee-for-service system, which is considered less gender-biased than salary-based systems. Despite this, women in all specialty areas are more likely to do procedures that pay less, the researchers found.

Within general surgery, for example, women performed more operations such as cyst removal and biopsies, while their male counterparts did more lucrative procedures such as gastric bypasses, said one of the authors, Fahima Dossa, a surgical resident at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Dossa suggest one reason may be that women choose or are pushed into less lucrative specialties, and less lucrative procedures within specialties. She also said female surgeons likely get fewer referrals over all than their male counterparts, and those they do get tend to be on the lower-paying end.

“It looks like women are having fewer opportunities to do the more higher-paying procedures,” Dr. Dossa said in an interview. “There’s often this [view] that women are choosing these things. Women are choosing these specialties, and choosing to do certain types of procedures. But I can assure you women are not choosing consciously to make less money.”

Nancy Baxter, a general surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and an author of the study, said female surgeons may also be less aggressive when it comes to billing.

“A lot of time, [the gender gap] gets attributed to the women; so the women aren’t working hard enough, the women aren’t choosing the right specialties,” Dr. Baxter said. “What you see here is it’s not the women, it’s the system. So if the system is giving to women procedures that are worth less per hour, we have to fix the system.”

The research team, led by St. Michael’s Hospital, compared the earnings of female and male surgeons using data from the non-profit research institute ICES, formerly known as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. It looked at more than 1.5 million elective surgical procedures performed on adult patients by 3,275 surgeons in Ontario in eight specialties between January, 2014, and December, 2016.

Based on the amount paid for the procedures and the time it takes to do them, the researchers found over all that male surgeons earned $300.86 an hour on average, compared with $214.59 an hour for female surgeons. When they compared female surgeons with their male counterparts within each specialty, they found male surgeons earned $24.63 more an hour in general surgery, $73.73 more an hour in orthopedic surgery, and $79.39 more an hour in cardiothoracic surgery. In gynecology, even though female surgeons outnumber males, male surgeons earned $22.92 more an hour.

In almost all cases, female and male surgeons took the same amount of time to perform identical procedures, so the researchers noted the differences cannot be explained by women taking longer.  

Nicely portrayed, but, some huge information is missing! When did the surgeries get performed.. weekends, statutory holidays, overtime, night shifts? How many sick days or holiday time did each surgeon utilize. These make a massive difference in your end pay. I’m quite sure that women surgeons really being paid less than men, for the same surgery, would be against the law.

All that is stated, is that female surgeons took home less money. And if they chose to bill less for a surgery, that doesn’t count, because they control the charge. And the choice of surgeries that pay different amounts is irrelevant because everyone is allowed to choose a career.

This quote could be true.. “ So if the system is giving to women procedures that are worth less per hour, we have to fix the system.”
but nothing is shown that women get paid less, they simply take home less.

Thanks Bill

I wasn't sure if you could income split the locked in portion. Happy labour day to those in BC! Regardless as to where women workers are now, we've come a long way.