Men are paid over £15,000 more than their female counterparts in medicine in the UK, a report reveals.
The research, by the BMA, shows that the gender pay gap widens as women’s careers progress.
Some of this pay gap can be explained by career factors, such as female doctors taking career breaks or maternity leave and men dominating the senior roles in the profession.
However, there is still an unexplained discrepancy of £5,500 between male and female consultants, and a £2,000 gap among juniors.
The report’s authors attribute this to discrimination and claim women face a “hostile culture” in medicine.
Dr Helen Goodyear, a consultant paediatrician at Heartlands hospital in Birmingham and president of the Medical Women’s Federation, said: “It’s endemic in the NHS - women not being paid the same as similarly experienced, similarly talented male counterparts.”
The report suggests that women with families are often at a disadvantage when applying for new positions or negotiating for pay because they often cannot offer to move jobs owing to their family commitments.
There is also evidence from the research that employers are unsympathetic to the pressures from family life, especially those relating to time off.
And the report suggests that NHS trusts are also not enforcing equal pay regimes at a local level.
A spokesperson for the BMA said: “A worrying pay gap continues to exist between men and women in UK medicine today. Some of this pay gap can be explained by the fairly recent influx of large numbers of women into the medical workforce and that many have not yet reached the higher levels of the career ladder.
“Despite this, there is evidence of discrimination, especially in the continued failure of the NHS to provide adequate support to women with families. In particular, women with children often have limited room for manoeuvre when trying to negotiate new positions or pay levels because they have a settled family and are unlikely to be able to move jobs or change their working patterns. This restricts their ability to get a fair deal and leaves them at a significant disadvantage to men who often do not have the same constraints.”
The study examined the pay of 1,015 doctors working for the NHS, private healthcare providers and in academia, and was funded by the BMA, Medical Women’s Federation, the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Imperial College London.
Tags: Discrimination, Equality, Pay
Like all statistics, they do not tell you much unless you know the details of HOW they were collected. I assume these are AVERAGE figures; so what was the ’spread’ of earnings for both men and women? I suspect there will be quite a wide variation amongst the men, maybe even overlapping the range for women. When you take into account different grades, bandings, stages of career, part-time or full time, with or without Discretionary Points, let alone private practice or academia, it would be surprising if there were NOT differences! However, if women are really not being paid at “the same rate for the job”, then their employers are breaking the law - i.e. committing a crime; if there is firm evidence of this then there should be a prosecution. But those affected must be prepared to provide the evidence and, if necessary, give evidence in court. Retired Orthopod