• Annie Koempel, Melissa K Filippi, Madeline Byrd, Emma Bazemore, Anam Siddiqi, and Yalda Jabbarpour.
• From the American Board of Family Medicine, Lexington, KY (AK, MB); Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care, Washington, DC (MKF, EB, AS, YJ). AKoempel@theabfm.org.
• J Am Board Fam Med. 2024 Oct 25; 37 (4): 690697690-697.

BackgroundNested within a growing body of evidence of a gender pay gap in medicine are more alarming recent findings from family medicine: a gender pay gap of 16% can be detected at a very early career stage. This article explores qualitative evidence of women's experiences negotiating for their first job out of residency to ascertain women's engagement with and approach to the negotiation process.MethodsWe recruited family physicians who graduated residency in 2019 and responded to the American Board of Family Medicine 2022 graduate survey. We developed a semistructured interview guide following a modified life history approach to uncover women's experiences through the transitory stages from residency to workforce. A qualitative researcher used Zoom to interview 19 geographically and racially diverse early career women physicians. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using NVivo software following an Inductive Content Analysis approach.ResultsThree main themes emerged from the data. First, salary was found to be nonnegotiable, exemplified by participants' inability to change initial salary offers. Second, the role of peer support throughout residency and early career was crucial to uncovering and rectifying salary inequity. Third, a pay expectation gap was identified among women from minority and low-income households.ConclusionTo rectify the gender pay gap in medicine, a systems-level approach is required. This can be achieved through various levels of interventions: societally expanding the use of and removing the stigma around parental leave, recognizing the importance of contributions not currently valued by productivity-based payment models, examining assumptions about leadership; and institutionally moving away from fee-for-service systems, encouraging flexible schedules, increasing salary transparency, and improving advancement transparency.© Copyright by the American Board of Family Medicine.

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