Assessment of pharmacist gender bias: Egalitarianism of the Department of Veterans Affairs

Abstract

For the past 2 decades, the earnings gap between genders has narrowed for pharmacists, making it 1 of the smallest for a high-wage profession. Gender bias is reflected in 2 main areas, pay and opportunity. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the largest integrated health care system in the country, and the authors performed an analysis to see if there was any evidence of gender bias within its pharmacist workforce. The distribution of pharmacists by gender, age, and years of service was examined and whether part-time employment had any impact was also studied. Overall, there is a high degree of gender egalitarianism in terms of pay and opportunity for pharmacists at the VA. The level of step achievement, and thus, pay for men and women, was not associated with gender but rather years of service.