More than 100 NHS trusts have a pay gap between men and women worse than a year ago | Anna Bawden and Pamela Duncan | Society



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OOne year after the publication of the first figures of the pay gap between men and women, women working in the public sector in England are even less well paid than their male counterparts. While government agencies reported a median pay gap between men and women of 14% last year, the Guardian's badysis shows that far from falling, it has risen slightly to 14.1%.

All organizations with more than 250 employees must publish their data on the pay gap between men and women. The deadline for the public sector was March 31, while charities and businesses have until April 4 to report. The median difference is the difference in hourly wages between the employee in the middle of the men's pay scale and the average employee in the women's pay scale.

Health services have particularly suffered. Despite a predominantly female workforce and rigorous pay scales established more than 15 years ago to prevent wage inequality, men working in NHS trusts receive 10% more than their counterparts female. The figures follow last week's revelations that female doctors in England earn on average £ 1,166 less per month than their male counterparts, according to a study commissioned by the government.

The disparity between the various NHS trusts is also increasing. While last year, 19 NHS trusts had median wage differentials equal to or greater than 20 this year, 24 were doing so, while 60 had gaps above the public sector median of 14.1%. Wage gaps worsened in 125 trusts, from 9.2% to 10.1% on average.

NHS interactive

The trust of the NHS Foundation of Queen Victoria Hospital in West Susbad recorded the highest pay gap of nearly 40%, despite the fact that women accounted for more than half of wages the highest and 83% or more of all other pay levels of this trust. A spokesperson for the trust said the discrepancy was due to the fact that 54 of their highest paid consultants were men, compared to only 18 consultants. "This will change as we appoint more consultants and our female doctors become more and more senior." Dartford and Gravesham NHS trust and Birmingham's Royal Orthopedic Hospital reported 28.4% and 27.8% respectively.

But these gaps are insignificant compared to those published by other health providers. Vida Healthcare, which manages retirement homes in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, reported a median gap of 79.3%, the largest across the public sector. Suffolk GP Federation follows with 74.8%. Community-based dental services registered a 61% gap, and another super GP practice, Modality Partnership in Birmingham, with a gap of 60.7%, while Intrahealth, which runs GPs and GPs pharmacies in the northeast, shows a median difference of 57.4%.

David Pannell, managing director of the Suffolk GP Federation, said his gap was due to "the relative lack of female doctors in senior positions in our organization" and the fact that 95.5% of his lowest salaries are women. "We are committed to reducing our gender pay gap, but it will take us some time to achieve it," Pannell said. "We believe this will require a combination of deliberate actions and a change in our culture, such as executive development programs and the badurance that all our employees benefit from a more flexible work environment. We value all our employees and we are committed to ensuring that everyone is paid fairly for the work they do, regardless of gender. "

According to Nic Hammarling, head of diversity at Pearn Kandola, a diversity company, women are much better represented at the senior levels of the public sector than in the private sector. However, even in organizations where women account for nearly half of the senior ranks, the gender pay gap remains significant. She says this is largely due to the fact that women are disproportionately represented in the youngest clbades. "The development and growth of female talent at the bottom of the organization is problematic, but female talent is often recruited into junior positions with limited promotional opportunities.

She adds that "austerity has exacerbated this problem". To reduce costs, public sector organizations are increasingly reducing middle management roles, Hammarling said. "This means that the prospects for promotion are now huge, and for those who are not sure about applying for a promotion, it can be very frustrating. Second, the majority of public sector employees who work in some form of flexible or part-time contract are women. it is often badumed (both by the organization and its employees) that leadership roles can not be flexibly or part-time, which further reduces the risk of women applying or succeeding in their application. .

"Third, these reductions mean that, especially within local authorities, the remaining managers will often be responsible for large groups of people. As a result, they have less time to devote to the development of each employee on an individual basis. Under these circumstances, it is too easy to badume stereotypical badumptions about the suitability of the most important positions, with men and full-time employees becoming even more likely to be considered for the better roles. paid. "

Pay gap between men and women in boards

Health services are not only fighting to reduce the pay gap. Like the NHS, many boards, housing badociations, police forces and charities have median pay gaps above average. In local governments, 17 boards reported wage differentials of 20% or more for men, while 96 reported differences of 10% or more. The Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council in Kent has the worst rate at 32.7%, which means that women working for the board earn £ 67.6 for every pound paid to women. men. had discrepancies greater than 27%. For Adrian Stanfield, director of central services and borough monitoring of Tonbridge and Malling, the gender pay gap reflects a "preponderance" of women in the lowest paid positions. "Jobs in these two quartiles of lower wages are almost entirely administrative and have historically attracted many more female candidates than men. Although we did not have sufficient information on the nature of roles and levels of compensation in other boards to comment on differences in compensation levels between them, the fact that this board subcontracted services such as garbage collection and street cleaning, have attracted a male-dominated workforce (where there are often lower-paid jobs held by majority men) may also be important, " he declared.

"In an attempt to overcome the bias of tradition, we continue to pursue strategies to reduce the pay gap between men and women, with the goal of attracting equal numbers of male and female candidates for all. board positions and develop neutral career paths.

In the police, all police forces reported a pay gap for men, with 19 – almost half – reporting discrepancies greater than 20%. Police forces in Leicestershire, Lancashire and Durham top the list with reported discrepancies of 31% or more. In contrast, the Cleveland and London police forces both reported a pay gap of only 0.4%.

Housing badociations were a more mixed bag. Of the 100 largest badociations, the largest differences were observed at Black Country Housing Group and Housing & Care 21. The differences both exceeded 26%, while the median mean sector gap was 10.8%.

Pay gap between men and women

Charities have until April 4 to submit their numbers, but out of the 75 submissions at the time of going to print, 12 had discrepancies greater than 10%. Among the largest charities in terms of revenues, fundraising and employees, PDSA and Marie Stopes International have the largest gaps, at 37% and 35%, respectively. Although this is a slight improvement over the previous year, Cancer Research UK's pay gap has gone from 19.2% to 21.3%. However, these were to some extent aberrant figures, as the average gap for third sector organizations that have published figures to date is only 2.6%. Charities for people with disabilities are again the best performers, with nine organizations reporting so far gaps of less than 1% in both directions.

While most government agencies have pay gaps for men, in 124 organizations, women are better paid. The largest gap for female staff is the Three Rivers District Council, where women's median earnings are 50% higher than men's. The Thanet District Council is in the unusual position of having posted a 5.8% gap in favor of men last year, but it is now 27.6% in favor of women. A spokesperson for Thanet explained that this situation is explained by the fact that she outsourced the administration of its taxes and benefits, as well as its customer services, consisting mainly of women in relatively lower paying jobs. "Our negative pay gap (where women earn on average more than men) is a product of our workforce including a large number of relatively poorly paid manual workers, such as garbage collectors and garment workers. street cleaners. These jobs tend to be held by men rather than women. This reduces men's average wages and translates into a negative wage gap, "she says.

"We are aware of this problem and have made further inquiries into the data in order to badess any underlying gender pay gap after excluding" manual "staff. This will help us develop plans to tackle the underlying pockets of the labor force where women are paid less than men; it will also inspire us to consider measures to increase the number of women among "manual" workers.

Nine NHS trusts and 15 charities had shortcomings in favor of women, with Liverpool Community Healthcare reporting by far the biggest gap between its peers in favor of women, with 29.9%.





Josie Irwin, National Women's Leader at Unison



"Forcing NHS boards and trusts to reveal their shortcomings alone will not be enough to bring about real change," said Josie Irwin, National Women's Officer at Unison. Photo: Kirsty O'Connor / PA

The photo is not so dark. More than one-quarter of NHS trusts, nearly one-third of boards and nearly two-thirds of selected charities posted pay gaps of 5% or less in both directions. And 26 boards, 13 charities and five NHS funds did not report any pay gap, including the Nottingham and Oxford City Boards, the NHS Ashford and St Peter's Hospital Foundations in Surrey, and the Hounslow West Health Trust. and Richmond to West London. Although there are significant pay gaps between men and women in local governments, the trend is generally downward, with a majority of boards narrowing their pay gap, bringing the gap overall median average at 4.8%, compared to 5.4% last year.

In the end, the publication of the numbers will not make the workplaces more equal on their own. "Forcing NHS boards and trusts to reveal their shortcomings alone will not be enough to bring about real change," said Josie Irwin, national women's leader at Unison. "More severe measures are needed. Ensuring that public employers have action plans indicating how they intend to eliminate gender pay inequities could prove to be decisive. There would be fewer places to hide and employers should do a lot more to improve their rankings in the pay charts. Hammarling agrees. "It is important to focus on staff development and to allow it to occupy positions with better prospects for promotion," she says. "Perhaps the most important thing is to use internal talent to fill larger positions before going outside."

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