Yale settles inequity complaint over pay for female doctors
Yale University has agreed to pay $87,500 to four female cardiologists in its medical school after the U.S. Labor Department found they were being paid less than their male counterparts.
The inequity was discovered during a routine review of the school’s compliance with federal labor laws covering the 2016-17 fiscal year, according to a Labor Department compliance office.
Yale violated federal requirements that employers not discriminate based on gender, it found.
Under terms of the settlement, which was released Oct. 2, two of them were awarded $27,500, one received $20,000 and another was given $12,500 in back pay.
The school did not respond Thursday to an email seeking comment. University spokesperson Karen Peart told the Yale
Daily News that no other pay disparities were found during the review.
The women were hired when the Yale New Haven Health System acquired the practices at which the women worked and did not adjust their existing salaries, according to the settlement.
“We are fighting hard for women to have the same pay as men,” Dr. Elizabeth Jonas, the co-chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine at Yale’s School of Medicine, told the newspaper. “I think the problem will never be solved until the university publishes all salaries and pays according to a scale set by rank and seniority.”
The settlement requires that Yale conduct internal audits and keep all records relevant to the violation. The school also must submit progress reports through September 2022 detailing any pay adjustments on the cardiologists’ professional track.