Texas doctor claims female doctors get paid less because they 'do not work as hard'

A Texas doctor is facing outrage after claiming that that female physicians get paid less because "they do not work as hard."

The comments were made by Dr. Gary Tigges, who practices in internal medicine, in a feature story in the "Women in Medicine Issue" of the Dallas Medical Journal.

"Yes, there is a pay gap. Female physicians do not work as hard and do not see as many patients as male physicians... Most of the time their priority is something else, family, social whatever," he said. "Nothing needs to be done about it unless they actually want to work harder and put in hours."

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The doctor's comments/Screenshot[/caption]

Tigges, 53, runs a Plano practice that founded in 1996 and which has three doctors, one of them a woman.

Tigges told the Dallas Morning Journal that his comments were "misconstrued" and that he didn't know they would be published.

"My response sounds terrible and horrible and doesn’t reflect what I was really trying to say," he claimed. "I’m not saying female physicians should be paid less, but they earn less because of other factors. Women might take longer with their patients, and that’s a great thing, but then their pay is less."

The reaction was swift, with lots of angry responses and some users posting images of what were purported to be racist and sexist statements from a now-deleted Twitter account with the handle @garytigges.

Others commented and shared studies that disproved Tigges' claims.