The gender pay gap has gradually closed in the 60 years or so since the Equal Pay Act was introduced. Whereas women then earned 59 cents to the dollar compared to men, that gap is now 84 cents to the dollar.
Research from BerkeleyHaas questions some of the common explanations for this persistent gap, such as poor negotiating talents or disproportionate childcare responsibilities and suggests instead that gender stereotypes can undermine the trust people have in the expertise of women.
“All high-skill, client-based markets depend on trust, because the consumer is a non-expert relative to the provider,” the researchers explain. “If you hire a banker, a mechanic, a management consultant, a financial advisor, or a physician and you don’t trust them, what do you do with the advice they give you? Do you follow it?”
Seeking a second opinion
The study suggests that when we’re uncomfortable with the solution we’re offered, we tend to look for a second opinion, and that gender can play a crucial role in this process.
The researchers pulled from a medical claims dataset to explore how the gender of a physician underpinned the perceived value of their expertise, which was determined by how frequently patients looked for a second opinion.
The results showed that people were far more likely to look for a second opinion if the first opinion was provided by a female physician. While this was true for both men and women, it was found to be especially so for men.
The researchers were able to quantify the cost of this doubt in the expertise of female physicians, and suggest that it meant that the medical bills from their male colleagues were 10.7% higher than theirs in the year following the first visit by the patient.
“We think the results would be similar in professional settings with the same characteristics: where the client is uninformed relative to the service provider, and where there are gender stereotypes about professional competence, which definitely exist in finance, banking, management consulting, the legal profession, and many others,” the researchers explain.
Patterns in the data
After diving into the data, a number of gender-related patterns emerged. For instance, most people preferred to see specialists of the same gender as themselves. Indeed, patients were 22% more likely to see a physician of the same sex as they were the opposite.
What’s more, it was also apparent that both men and women were more likely to seek a second opinion after the first appointment with a female physician, with this especially likely when the patient was a man. This matters, as patients are more likely to stick with the physician who gave them the second opinion.
This resulted in female physicians securing 10.7% less in patient billings than their male peers. For instance, if female specialists saw male patients, their average billing amount over one year was 18% less than when a male patient saw a male physician. This difference was 7% for female patients.
The researchers hope that raising awareness of the impact stereotypes have, it can begin to shift the conversation and start to change things for the better.
“We hold all of these gendered beliefs about work even if we are not aware of them, and they have a way of becoming reality,” they conclude.
