Women in medicine: what women physicians say, in their own words

Last updated September 24, 2026.

The short answer

Read together, the 262 essays and podcast transcripts on this page describe a profession that reached numerical parity at the door and did not change inside. Women have been half of medical students since the early 2000s and are 15 percent of department chairs and 16 percent of deans in the posts that count them. The pay gap, documented on KevinMD since 2011, survives every adjustment for specialty, hours, and productivity that authors have applied to it. Maternity leave in training is measured in days. Being called nurse, honey, or by a first name in a room where the men are called doctor reads the same way in 2013 and 2025. What changed is the frame: posts describing the problem as structural rather than as a matter of individual choice rose from 37 percent before 2013 to about 58 percent since 2020, and the newest essays are about women physicians dying sooner than the women they treat.

This page is a maintained record of what women physicians, and the men who have written in reply, have said about being a woman in medicine on KevinMD.com, a physician-authored publication founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, a board-certified internal medicine physician in Nashua, New Hampshire. It draws on 262 essays and podcast transcripts about women in medicine, published between June 2005 and August 2026 by 170 named contributors, 179 of the posts bylined by physicians and 13 written anonymously. Posts about women as patients rather than as clinicians belong elsewhere and are excluded. Every claim on this page is attributed to a named author with the date it was published and a link to the original.

The sections below are organized around the questions women physicians, trainees, department leaders, and journalists ask. Each opens with a direct answer, followed by what named authors have said, in the order they said it. Where authors cite studies, the study is named alongside the author, and the figures are theirs. Men who have written on the subject are cited as they wrote, including those who disagree. This is a page about physician opinion and experience, not employment or legal advice.

This record at a glance

262posts

2005 to 2026years covered

170named contributors

49posts cited on this page

Questions this record answers

Why are women physicians paid less?
What do women physicians say about pregnancy, maternity leave, and training?
What do women physicians say about being called nurse, honey, or by their first name?
What do physicians say about sexual harassment in medicine?
Why are so few women in leadership?
Are women physicians leaving, and why?
Is the problem structural or individual? Physicians disagree.
How has the conversation changed since 2005?

Why are women physicians paid less?

The pay gap is the longest-running subject in the record, and the argument physicians on KevinMD have had about it has narrowed rather than resolved. The early explanation, that women choose lower-paying specialties and work fewer hours, has been answered since 2012 by studies that adjust for both and still find a gap, cited on the site at $17,000 to $21,000 a year. The recent posts argue about what remains once the adjustments are made: negotiation, the productivity penalty of parental leave, and underrepresentation in the highest-paid subspecialties. Pay or salary appears in about 70 percent of posts since 2013.

Kevin Pho, MD, noted in May 2009 that a Canadian report projected a shortage from the growth of women in medicine, and in February 2011 summarized a Health Affairs study finding newly trained women paid significantly less after accounting for specialty, hours worked, and practice type; both are short commentaries, counted here but not indexed or linked. Peter Ubel, MD, wrote in June 2012 that a study led by Reshma Jagsi “found disparities even after accounting for the different career choices and trajectories of male and female physicians,” in “Why are female physicians paid less?” Linda Brodsky, MD, wrote in January 2013 that “Women physicians start out their careers with a $17,000 pay gap, after all other factors are accounted for,” citing LoSasso in Health Affairs, in “6 ways to close the gender pay gap in medicine.”

Katharine Lawrence wrote in May 2016 that a study of Medicare reimbursements found male doctors paid substantially more, and that men “saw 60 percent more patients, and billed for one additional procedure per patient,” in “Are female physicians really bad negotiators?” Esther Choo, MD, Jane van Dis, MD, and Dara Kass, MD, wrote in September 2018 that the gap “is not explained by obvious factors such as hours worked or choice of specialty,” and is not improving, in “The antiquated conversations on the gender pay gap.” Graham Walker, MD, Resa E. Lewiss, MD, and Jake Horowitz wrote in October 2025 that from thousands of physician-reported data points, controlling for confounders, “Women ER physicians earn $21,000 less than men on average,” in “Why women ER doctors earn $21,000 less than men.” Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA, wrote in May 2026 that a 2016 study in JAMA Internal Medicine “found female physicians earned roughly $20,000 less per year than male counterparts,” and proposed a CMS re-entry RVU adjustment after parental leave, in “The physician gender pay gap is an engineering problem.” Megan E. Paskitti, MD, wrote in July 2026 that “Even when researchers account for specialty choice, hours worked, and practice setting, women physicians still tend to earn less” than men, and that underrepresentation in the highest-earning subspecialties shifts the numbers in ways that “have nothing to do with hours or effort,” in “The gender pay gap isn’t just about what she chose.”

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What do women physicians say about pregnancy, maternity leave, and training?

Women physicians on KevinMD have described pregnancy in training as a problem their programs treated as theirs alone, with no leave policy, three days of leave, or leave that colleagues resented, and they have described it the same way from 2008 to 2026. The men who have written on the subject have written in support. Pregnancy or maternity leave appears in about a third of posts since 2013.

Kevin Pho, MD, noted in September 2008 pregnancy during residency, in a short commentary counted here but not indexed or linked. An anonymous physician wrote in October 2015 that technology companies had lengthened leave past twelve weeks while she was “in discussions with my large academic health physicians group as to how much paid leave I will actually receive,” in “Maternity leave for physicians is a disgrace. It’s time to fix that.” Archana Reddy Shrestha, MD, an emergency physician, wrote in November 2015 that patients with infections known to harm a fetus “could walk through the door at any moment,” in “You have no idea what it’s like working in the ER as a pregnant physician.” Jamie Coleman, MD, a surgeon, wrote in November 2015, after readers objected that a woman chose to get pregnant, that “saying that every woman chooses to get pregnant is pretty inane,” and that maternity leave equals family leave, in “Why male physicians should care about maternity leave.”

Elisabeth Poorman, MD, wrote in March 2018 that “Many women have only six weeks of federally mandated leave, and some trainees have no protected maternity leave,” and that all such issues, “from sexual harassment to paltry maternity leave policies to salary discrepancies, are an institutional choice,” in “Medicine systematically disadvantages women physicians at every stage of their careers.” Qaali Hussein, MD, a surgeon, wrote in October 2019 that when she asked about the maternity leave policy “I was told there was none,” and that a faculty member told her the last pregnant resident in the program “still hasn’t come back from maternity leave six years later,” in “The stigma of motherhood in medicine.” Lauren A. Umstattd, MD, wrote in October 2019 that her department’s policy stated “Each new parent will be granted three days of maternity/paternity leave,” in “Advice to a pregnant surgical resident.” Diane W. Shannon, MD, MPH, wrote in April 2021 that “I pumped in the bathroom the first two days back at work because I couldn’t find the lactation room,” and that the fix is a reservable room and “someone to hold their pagers or cover for codes,” in “An organizational solution to lactation support for women physicians.” An anonymous resident wrote in June 2026 of being “bleeding and pregnant and alone in a call room at 21 weeks” after working weeks of nights, in “Pregnant resident discrimination nearly cost me everything.”

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What do women physicians say about being called nurse, honey, or by their first name?

The most repeated experience in the record is being assumed not to be the physician. Women physicians on KevinMD describe it from patients, from staff, and from colleagues, and they cite the study that measured it: at grand rounds, men introduced their female colleagues as “doctor” 49 percent of the time and their male colleagues far more often. The experience reads the same across twelve years.

Suzanne Koven, MD, wrote in May 2013 of a childhood neighbor who “had chosen a medical career over a husband and family,” in “Is there still sexism in medicine?” Jennifer Lycette, MD, an oncologist, wrote in July 2017 that addressing a woman physician by her marital title implies “her worth is reduced to her marital status,” in “Don’t call me ‘Mrs.’ Call me ‘Doctor.’.” Karen Tran-Harding, MD, wrote in April 2018 of a stranger in an elevator asking the male physician about his pager and the female physician whether she is a nurse, and that “It’s something that has happened to every female physician,” in “Oh, are you a nurse? The physician gender bias.” Allie Gips, MD, wrote in July 2018 a list of “Names you should learn to answer to: sweetheart, nurse, honey, baby, nurse, miss, nurse, and nurse,” in “Female physicians: You’re lucky to be here.” Roozehra Khan, DO, wrote in August 2018 that a study of grand rounds introductions found women called their colleagues doctor 96 percent of the time, while men called “female colleagues as doctor only 49 percent of the time,” in “Gender bias and the word, ‘doctor’.” Victoria Johnson, MD, MPH, wrote in February 2024 that the doctor scene in the film Barbie “made me feel like laughing and crying at the same time,” in “How Barbie exposes sexism in medicine.” Emma Fenske, DO, wrote in June 2025 of answering “Doctor. I am a doctor,” and that the assumption “reinforces outdated gender roles and undermines the visibility of women physicians,” in “Why women doctors are still mistaken for nurses.”

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What do physicians say about sexual harassment in medicine?

Harassment entered the record in 2011 and became a subject in its own right in 2017 and 2018, when 38 percent of posts mentioned it, most of them in the months after #MeToo. Women physicians described harassment from patients, supervisors, and colleagues, most of them anonymously; men and women physicians debated whether the answer was reporting systems, self-defense, or culture. The subject has since receded to 5 percent of posts.

Gizabeth Shyder, MD, writing under a pen name, wrote in October 2011 that sexual harassment “is especially tough when you are in a subordinate position, under someone who is grading you,” in “Sexual harassment in the medical workplace.” Peter Ubel, MD, wrote in October 2016 that “we cannot tolerate behaviors that can discourage the best and brightest in our field,” and that deans and chairs must make it easier “to report instances of sexual harassment without fearing for their careers,” in “The silent epidemic of sexual harassment in medical schools.” An anonymous physician wrote in October 2017 that harassment came “at times from our male supervisors, co-workers, and team members,” and asked colleagues to share their experiences under the hashtag, in “Women doctors: Speak up, because #MeToo.” Shaili Jain, MD, a psychiatrist, wrote in February 2018 that a study of more than six million patients found “a strong correlation between screening positive for experiencing sexual trauma and subsequent death by suicide,” in “What #MeToo must learn from the science of sexual harassment.” Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD, wrote in July 2025 that clinicians of both sexes “are not only being harassed by distressed patients but are also being punished by the systems,” meant to regulate or protect health care, in “Harassment and overreach are driving physicians to quit.”

On The Podcast by KevinMD: “Personal attacks and sexual harassment of physicians on social media,” Shikha Jain, December 2021; and “Sexual harassment in medicine,” Kellie Lease Stecher, March 2021.

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Why are so few women in leadership?

Physicians on KevinMD have cited the same figures for a decade, 15 percent of department chairs and 16 percent of deans, against half of students, and they describe the causes as a pipeline that leaks at every promotion: fewer grants, less sponsorship, and the biological clock arriving in the same years as the tenure clock. Leadership appears in 43 percent of posts in 2017 to 2019 and 42 percent since 2023; mentorship or sponsorship rose from none before 2013 to 40 percent.

Linda Brodsky, MD, the most frequent contributor on the topic in the early years, wrote in November 2012 that in a “medical school department or hospital administrative suite, women leaders are notably absent,” and that women “have not yet set the new benchmark which will measure them differently,” in “Can women physicians truly be senior leaders in medicine?” Sasha K. Shillcutt, MD, wrote in May 2018 that “Women are often not asked to speak simply because no one has heard them on a stage,” and that “It is time we put women on panels and stages and let them speak science,” in “It’s time for women physicians to shine on stage.” Roya Saffary, MD, wrote in September 2018 that the AAMC reported 51 percent of medical school applicants were women in 2017 while “Only 15 percent of department chairs and 16 percent of all deans at U.S. medical schools are women,” in “Women in medicine: Are we leading yet?” Toyin M. Falusi, MD, wrote in August 2020 that women made up “57 percent of all instructors in medical schools,” 39 percent of associate professors, and 26 percent of professors, in “Women in medicine: a conversation with my daughter about lessons learned.” Sylk Sotto, EdD, MPS, MBA, wrote in June 2025 of her study of “benevolent sexism (BvS) in academic medicine and how it may quietly limit women’s careers,” in “How kindness in disguise is holding women back in academic medicine.” Kolleen Dougherty, MD, wrote in September 2025 that the cost is found “in the slow, compounding disadvantages: slower career advancement, smaller research grants, fewer leadership opportunities, and persistent pay gaps,” in “The high cost of gender inequity in medicine.”

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Are women physicians leaving, and why?

Women physicians leave medicine at higher rates and younger ages than men, and physicians on KevinMD have written about it since the site’s first year, when the subject was dissatisfaction and suicide, through the burnout years, to the 2026 posts that treat it as a workforce problem for everyone and as a mortality problem for women physicians themselves. Part-time or leaving appears in 42 percent of posts since 2023, and burnout in 44 percent, the highest in the record.

Kevin Pho, MD, noted in June 2005 the suicide rate among women physicians and in September 2006 on their job stress and dissatisfaction; both are short commentaries, counted here but not indexed or linked. Dike Drummond, MD, wrote in February 2012 that women “seem to follow the classic three part pattern” of burnout in order, exhaustion first, while men show it differently, in “Physician burnout presents differently in male and female doctors.” Genmedmom, MD, writing under a pen name, wrote in August 2012 that telling young women physicians “with enough brains and hard work and determination you go anywhere in medicine” is “bull, and Anne-Marie Slaughter says so,” in “Does Anne-Marie Slaughter’s advice apply to female physicians?” Nisha Mehta, MD, wrote in May 2018 that “a little over 50 percent of physicians matriculating in medical school are female,” and that keeping them requires more part-time positions rather than a choice “between family and what they want to do,” in “How do we keep women physicians in medicine?” Tomi Mitchell, MD, wrote in November 2021 that “Black female doctors represent only 2 percent of all U.S.-based physicians” and “experience a disproportionate amount of discrimination,” in “The unique agony of being a Black female doctor.”

Jessie Mahoney, MD, wrote in March 2025 that medicine cannot “afford to keep losing women physicians” to burnout, exhaustion, chronic illness, and premature death, in “The cost of caring: How medicine is shortening the lives of women physicians.” Dawn Sears, MD, wrote in June 2026 that “The number one reason people cited for leaving medicine was the hassle factor,” and that “Women are asked to clarify their orders and recommendations 25 percent more often than male physicians,” in “10 ways to keep women physicians from leaving.” Cassie Burton Greenbaum, MD, wrote in June 2026 that women are “leaving medicine earlier and at higher rates than men, taking with them decades of clinical expertise,” in “Physician loneliness is driving women out of medicine.” Amber K. Brooks, MD, wrote in June 2026 that many physicians carry what she calls a care tax, “an additional, often invisible burden that contributes to burnout yet remains underrecognized and under-researched, particularly among women physicians,” citing research in Pediatrics that women physicians spend more time on both childcare and eldercare, in “Physician caregiver burnout and the care tax women carry.” Diane W. Shannon, MD, MPH, wrote in July 2026 that women “are cutting back and leaving practice on a scale that is alarming,” citing Lisa Rotenstein’s finding that they leave across all specialties and at younger ages, in “Women physicians are leaving. Whose problem is it?” Ali Novitsky, MD, wrote in August 2026 that a 2025 JAMA Psychiatry study using the National Violent Death Reporting System found women physicians have “a 53 percent higher suicide risk than women who are not physicians,” the inversion of the pattern in every other occupation, and that “Black female physicians fared worst of all, with higher mortality than every other physician subgroup,” in “Women physicians die sooner. Hospitals still won’t act.”

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Is the problem structural or individual? Physicians disagree.

The argument underneath every section is whether the pay gap, the leave policies, and the leadership numbers are the result of institutional choices or of choices women make. The structural frame has grown, from 31 to 37 percent of posts before 2020 to about 58 percent since, but the other position is on the site in the words of women physicians who reject being described as victims, of women who write that other women are part of the problem, and of men who write that the differences are choices or that men experience them too.

Suzanne Koven, MD, wrote in May 2013 that women in medicine “are still more likely than men to cut back on work to care for young children,” and that “it’s a choice many of us feel lucky to be able to make,” in “Is there still sexism in medicine?” Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, wrote in January 2017 that a study finding lower 30-day mortality among patients of female physicians faced the threat that patients can choose their doctor “in ways that make the groups of patients non-comparable,” and asked what a treatment with that effect size would be worth, in “The difference between male and female physicians. Here’s what it means.” Elisabeth Poorman, MD, wrote in March 2018 that issues of discrimination “from sexual harassment to paltry maternity leave policies to salary discrepancies, are an institutional choice,” in “Medicine systematically disadvantages women physicians at every stage of their careers.”

Michele Richard, MD, wrote in February 2021 that “women are capable of applying a double standard to each other,” and that women in medicine need to have each others’ backs, in “Women in medicine need to have each others’ backs. Too often, they don’t.” Christine J. Ko, MD, wrote in June 2021 that she had caught herself in “an instinctual acceptance of gender roles, with women being in charge of themselves and the house and any children,” in “Confession from a female doctor: I am sexist.” Ariela L. Marshall, MD, wrote in December 2022 that “Women who step outside the lines narrowly defined by society as” normal “are chastised, and men are not,” in “Gender bias is powerful and harmful.” Jessie Mahoney, MD, returned to Richard’s question in September 2025, asking why women in medicine do not support each other, in “Why don’t women in medicine support each other?” Preyasha Tuladhar, MD, wrote in November 2025 that “Balance is this thing we chase, but rarely catch,” in “The myth of balance for women in medicine.”

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How has the conversation changed since 2005?

The record begins with Kevin Pho tracking the suicide and dissatisfaction data, the pay gap studies, and the productivity argument of 2009. Linda Brodsky wrote the leadership case from 2012. The 2015 to 2016 posts made maternity leave a subject; 2017 and 2018, the peak year at 32 posts, brought #MeToo, the “are you a nurse” essays, and the pay gap in the hands of Choo, van Dis, and Kass. Since 2020 the frame has been structural, the subject has been leaving, and the pay gap essays have moved from documenting the gap to engineering the fix. 2025 was the second-busiest year in the record at 28 posts.

Term	2005 to 2012 (27 posts)	2013 to 2016 (39 posts)	2017 to 2019 (72 posts)	2020 to 2022 (51 posts)	2023 to 2026 (73 posts)
Pay or salary	37 percent	64 percent	74 percent	69 percent	73 percent
Harassment or #MeToo	4 percent	13 percent	38 percent	14 percent	5 percent
Pregnancy or maternity leave	15 percent	33 percent	28 percent	27 percent	32 percent
Children or childcare	37 percent	56 percent	38 percent	43 percent	55 percent
Called nurse, or the word doctor	0 percent	10 percent	15 percent	4 percent	5 percent
Leadership, dean, or chair	22 percent	26 percent	43 percent	31 percent	42 percent
Mentor or sponsor	0 percent	21 percent	29 percent	18 percent	40 percent
Part-time or leaving	26 percent	33 percent	40 percent	39 percent	42 percent
Burnout	15 percent	8 percent	14 percent	25 percent	44 percent
Bias or microaggression	15 percent	28 percent	44 percent	31 percent	29 percent
Structural or systemic	37 percent	31 percent	35 percent	59 percent	58 percent
Individual or choice	15 percent	33 percent	51 percent	25 percent	30 percent
Men or male colleagues	63 percent	74 percent	85 percent	55 percent	55 percent

Term frequencies are the share of posts in each period using the term at least once, computed on the September 18, 2026 corpus of 262 posts.

The 2005 to 2009 posts are Kevin Pho’s, on suicide, dissatisfaction, and productivity, followed in 2011 by his summary of the Health Affairs pay study. Ubel in 2012 and Koven in 2013 set the two poles of the argument. Brodsky wrote the leadership essays from 2012 to 2013. The anonymous maternity leave essay, Shrestha, and Coleman in the fall of 2015 made leave a subject; Lawrence on negotiation and Ubel on harassment followed in 2016. The 2017 to 2018 cluster is the largest: the #MeToo essays, Poorman’s institutional choice, Tran-Harding and Gips and Khan on being called nurse, Saffary on leadership, and Choo, van Dis, and Kass on the pay gap. Hussein and Umstattd in 2019 are the surgical residents. Since 2020 the record is Falusi to her daughter, Richard and then Mahoney on women and each other, Johnson on Barbie, Fenske on being mistaken for a nurse, Walker and Lewiss on the emergency medicine gap, Dougherty on cost, Sears and Greenbaum and Brooks on why women leave, Suk and Paskitti on the pay gap, Shannon on leaving, and Novitsky on dying sooner.

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About this record

The KevinMD women in medicine corpus by the numbers

The figures below describe the set of KevinMD posts this page draws on, as of September 18, 2026. They are counts of what KevinMD has published, not survey data.

Measure	Value
Posts in the corpus	262
Date range	June 28, 2005 to August 1, 2026
Named contributors	170
Posts bylined by an MD or DO	179
Anonymous posts	13
Podcast episodes with full transcripts	21
Posts in the corpus that are not indexed, counted but not cited	24
Total words	About 236,000
Peak years	2018, 32 posts; 2025, 28 posts
Most frequent contributors	Linda Brodsky, MD (8); Diane W. Shannon, MD, MPH (5); Nisha Mehta, MD (4); Jessie Mahoney, MD (3); Dawn Sears, MD (3)

How this page was built and how it is updated

The corpus was assembled from title searches for women in medicine, women physicians, female physician, female doctor, women doctors, women surgeons, gender, mother in medicine, motherhood, maternity, pregnant, pay gap, sexism, harassment, #MeToo, and physician mom, keeping the posts about women as clinicians and removing those about women as patients, about gender-affirming care, and about gender in clinical topics. Term frequencies were computed against the full text of each post on the corpus assembled for the September 18, 2026 build; this page was converted to the current standard on September 20, 2026 without rebuilding that corpus, so the counts and figures are as of September 18, 2026. Posts are counted whether or not they are indexed; citations on this page are limited to posts that are indexed and can be verified at the link. Twenty-four posts in the corpus are not indexed: Kevin Pho’s 2005 to 2011 commentaries, a few short essays, and nine podcast episodes without transcripts. They are counted but not cited. Quotations are taken verbatim from the original posts. Author credentials are as they appeared in the byline at publication; two contributors write under pen names and are cited under them. Kevin Pho’s posts from 2005 to 2011 were short commentaries on news and studies. On September 24, 2026, one post was added to answer questions readers bring to this subject; they were read in full and checked against the same rules, and the counts above were not recomputed. Every source is linked in the sentence that cites it, and the full list appears at the end of the page. Related records: Physician burnout: what physicians say, in their own words, Residency: what residents and attendings say, in their own words, Medical school: what students and physicians say, in their own words, and Physician suicide: what physicians say, in their own words.

This page is updated as new essays on women in medicine are published on KevinMD. When it is updated, the date at the top changes, the counts in the tables are recomputed, and new named claims are added to the relevant section. Nothing is removed unless the original post is removed. An author who believes a quotation on this page misrepresents them can write to Kevin Pho and the page will be corrected.

To cite this page: Pho K. Women in medicine: what women physicians say, in their own words. KevinMD.com. Updated September 24, 2026. https://kevinmd.com/women-in-medicine