Research: Gender pay gaps in medicine

• May 2018-December 2020

There are gender pay gaps throughout the medical profession. Analysing payroll data reveals basic gender pay gaps of:

• 24.4% for hospital and community health service (mostly hospital) doctors
• 33.5% for general practitioners (GPs)
• 21.4% for clinical academics

These gaps are considerable for a single occupational group. They narrow when we use statistical methods to create hypothetical like-for-like comparisons of men and women across hours worked, grade, experience and speciality. After this adjustment we would expect pay gaps to narrow. However, pay gaps remain substantive for many doctors, especially GPs.

Our analysis helps to explain the causes and shows that the gender pay gaps we observed are explained by:

• Hours – Women are more likely to work less than full-time (LTFT), which helps to explain why their pay is lower. Men report working more unpaid overtime, which means that their effective pay is overstated. When these factors are adjusted for, the gender wage gap is smaller.
• Grade and experience – Male doctors are more likely to be older, have more experience and hold more senior positions – all of these characteristics lead to higher pay. Periods of LTFT working have long-term implications for women’s career and pay trajectories as they reduce their experience and slow down or stall their progress to senior positions.
• Additional payments – Among hospital doctors, we find that gaps in total pay, which include clinical excellence awards, allowances and money from additional work, are larger than gaps in basic pay alone.

Taken from: Mend the Gap: The Independent Review into Gender Pay Gaps in Medicine in England

Recommendations

Gender pay gaps reflect inequality in the workplace and it is important to reduce and ultimately remove them to improve equality, recruitment and retention. The report’s main recommendations included:

• reviewing pay setting arrangements for hospital doctors to increase the use of job evaluation and reduce the number of points on a pay scale.
• developing greater transparency and clearer structures in setting GP pay
• Increasing transparency
• Individually negotiating pay and additional allowances
• monitoring the proportion of women and men applying for performance-related bonuses, encouraging more applications from women, and ensuring criteria reflect high performance in all specialities
• promoting flexible working to both men and women, making part-time working and training more accessible

 Many of the report recommendations have been implemented.