Gender pay gaps
in medicine
Analysis to explain the causes of gender pay gaps throughout the medical profession, including by hours, grade, experience and additional payments.
Research summary
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.
Research team
The project steering group
Research chair
- Prof Dame Jane Dacre, University College London
Research lead
- Prof Carol Woodhams, University of Surrey
Research collaborators
- Prof Carol Atkinson, Manchester Metropolitan University
- Dr Ioannis Laliotis, University of London
- Dr Mark Williams, Queen Mary University of London
- Dr Jo Blanden, University of Surrey
- Sheila Wild, Equal Pay Portal
- Dr Duncan Brown, Institute of Employment Studies
With funding from
The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Department of Health and Social Care.
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