Here is an article written by Kimberly Weisul for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network (April 6, 2011). To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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I’m not sure why debating the wage gap between men and women has suddenly become so popular, but one frequently-heard argument among those who think there is no legitimate wage gap between men and women is that women choose to work in lower-paying fields and put in fewer hours than men. As BNET blogger Penelope Trunk writes,

“Neurosurgeons are men and family practice doctors are women.”

It’s discouraging to hear this argument being made even after it has been proven to have no bearing whatsoever on the issue of the wage gap, at least in the medical field.

A study published in the February issue of Health Affairs shows that even within the same specialty, male doctors make more than female doctors. As the study’s lead researcher Anthony T. Lo Sasso, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes:“we found a significant gender gap that can not be explained by specialty choice, practice setting, work hours, or other characteristics.”

The study compared the starting salaries of male and female doctors between 1999 and 2008. The research team chose starting salaries because going into their first jobs, all the doctors had about equal experience-no one had taken off a substantial block of time to raise a family, for instance. What they found was striking:

Women doctors got lower starting salaries than men doctors with the same specialty. In 2008, the average male beginning cardiologist got a salary of $228,188. The woman who studied next to him got $204,671. Male radiologists got starting salaries of $250,709, while female radiologists got $244,532, on average.

Men got higher starting salaries in every specialty. Across specialties, men received a starting salary $16,819 higher than women in 2008.

The wage gap is getting worse, even though women are choosing higher paying specialties. In 1999, the gap between men and women was only $3,600, even though women are choosing higher-paying specialties now than they were ten years ago. In 2008, only about 30 percent of women doctors went into family medicine, compared to about half in 1999. If the wage gap is due to women choosing lower-paying specialties, you would think that the decreasing number choosing family medicine would mean that the wage gap would shrink.

Explanations for the Wage Gap
When it comes to the difference in starting salaries, the researchers ruled out various plausible-sounding rationales: It’s not that one sex works solo while the other joins an existing practice, nor is it because one group is salaried while the other works fee-for-service. It’s also not because women put in fewer hours.

Is it that women don’t negotiate job offers as well as men do (another often given reason by those who claim the wage gap has to do with women’s choices)? That wouldn’t explain why would women get worse at negotiating over a ten-year block of time, however.

The authors say they don’t think the wage gap is a result of sexism, but other explanations are equally unlikely. One suggestion is that women might be drawn to more family-friendly practices that offer lower pay. That speculation comes with a big assumption: That right out of the gate, before even knowing if they’re going to have children, women are willing to sacrifice compensation for a more family-friendly workplace.

Why do you think women are paid less than men for doing the same work?

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Kimberly Weisul is a freelance writer, editor and editorial consultant. She was most recently a senior editor at Bloomberg Businessweek and founding editor of BusinessWeek SmallBiz, an award-winning bimonthly magazine for entrepreneurs. Follow her on @weisul.