All 35 of the University of California’s highest-paid employees in 2016 were men

Some keys to earning more than $1 million as a University of California employee: Be a doctor. Or a coach. Or maybe an administrator. Also, be a man.

The 35 UC employees with the highest gross pay in 2016 are all men, according to a Bee review of new salary data from the UC system.

Twenty-nine of the men are prominent doctors at UC hospitals. Four are coaches or former coaches of men’s football or basketball teams. One was a hospital executive. One was an investment officer.

Their state-reported pay ranged from $1.1 million to $3.6 million.

The gender disparity among high earners was particularly acute among UC doctors.

Most doctors in California – 65 percent – are men, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But all 42 UC doctors who earned more than $1 million in gross pay last year were men, according to the Bee review of UC pay data. (The Bee based its analysis on publicly available photos of the doctors on UC websites, in combination with their names.)

The UC system is not unique. A 2016 study in JAMA Internal Medicine, a medical journal, found that women at teaching hospitals holding the rank of professor tended to earn about as much as men holding the lower rank of associate professor.

UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said that highly compensated doctors draw their compensation mostly from clinical fees or grants – not just from taxpayers. Likewise, top-paid coaches are paid mostly using revenue from ticket sales or television contracts.

When looking just at base pay – salaries that are directly controlled by UC administrators – the picture shines a little brighter for women, but large pay equity issues remain.

Twenty-five of the 35 UC employees – 70 percent – with the highest base pay in 2016 were men, UC compensation data show.

The president of the UC system is a woman: Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona and former secretary of Homeland Security for the United States.

But 385 UC employees earned higher gross pay than Napolitano in 2016. Twenty-two earned higher base pay. All but four of these were men.

The 25 highest-paid UC employees in 2016  

Story updated on 8/29 to reflect the proper title for UC President Janet Napolitano

This story was originally published August 28, 2017 at 3:21 PM with the headline "All 35 of the University of California’s highest-paid employees in 2016 were men."