From Your President
Etta D. Pisano, MD, FACR

Dear Fellow Women Radiologists:

I write today as the new President of the American Association for Women Radiologists to tell you about our organization’s main focus for 2008 – salary equity for women radiologists.

The factors underlying salary discrepancies are quite complex. Factors that affect compensation include subspecialty of practice, hours worked, time off for family responsibilities, acceptance of extra non-clinical burdens and desire for flexibility. All of these factors can reduce compensation for radiologists, though women radiologists may be disproportionately affected by them.

A breast imager or pediatric radiologist will not (in general) be paid as much as a neuroradiologist or interventionalist. A part-timer, or someone who takes less than full call, will make less than a full-timer with full call. Those who take significant time off for childbearing or elder care will lag in compensation relative to those who do not. Those who agree to lead practice groups or become chairs will receive extra compensation compared with those who do not. For those in academic departments, some leadership positions may not include salary supplements, so radiologists who put in time for teaching activities may not see their salaries rise on par with those who exercise other leadership opportunities.

In addition, there is lots of evidence that women are not as tough negotiators as men. So, small differences in salary at the beginning of a career increase over time as this factor may annually affect compensation.

So, what can the AAWR do to help our members to address this issue in their own lives?

Under the leadership of the AAWR Executive Committee, and in particular Salary Equity Committee Chair Ines Boechat and President-Elect Lynn Fordham, we plan the following activities during 2008-

• A workshop on negotiation skills open to our members at one of our AAWR luncheons at RSNA;
• Advocacy for data collection and publication of compensation data by gender by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American College of Radiology, who already study compensation of radiologists;
• The development of a repository of data on this topic for use by our members to help them in their own negotiations; and,
• The distribution of a tool (a statistical model) for member radiologists to use that will allow them to assess the compensation distribution of their own practice settings.

This issue has been of major interest to me since I began my own career in radiology. I hope that our members will find great value in these efforts by our organization in 2008.

I look forward to hearing from many of you as I serve this year as your President.

Warmest regards,

Etta D. Pisano, MD, FACR
President of AAWR