Male nurses in the US earn significantly more than female colleagues

Male nurses in the United States earn up to 8% more than their female counterparts and the pay gap has not changed over the past 25 years, a study reveals.

Nurse practitioner Ulrike Muench and a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco found the typical pay gap has consistently averaged $11,000 (equivalent to £7,429.87) for the past 25 years.

Even after factors such as education, work experience, marital and parental status and clinical specialty had been taken into account, men still earned $5,148 (£3,477.53) more than women, the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed.

The researchers examined two large US data sets – the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses and the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey – which collectively included responses from almost 300,000 registered nurses from 1988 to 2013.

Dr Muench said: ‘Given the large numbers of women employed in nursing, gender pay differences affect a sizeable part of the population. We hope that our results will bring awareness to this important topic.’

The most extreme disparity in pay was seen among nurse anaesthetists, who were paid $17,290 more if they were men than if they women; in cardiology male registered nurses earned $6,034 more than their female colleagues, the study revealed.