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Gender pay gap - take two

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30th May 2018
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The Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt may be showing the way forward for the profession with his determination to address and presumably eliminate the pay gap in the NHS.

Before anyone gets on to their high horse, it is worth pointing out that the primary point that he wishes to highlight does not relate to people getting the same pay for doing the same job. Instead, it's the difficulty that women suffer in their attempts to reach the higher echelons of the NHS.

Rather than taking the action that any sensible man would i.e. keeping his head down and hoping that the problem gets forgotten, Mr Hunt has announced a review to determine why male doctors are paid on average £10,000 more than their female colleagues. The BBC reports that women are paid 23% less across the NHS than men, although there is less of a gap for doctors where it is a mere 15%.

Those with reasonable memories of the analysis in this column last month will recall that the top accountancy practices are typically in the 15% to 35% range, with an unhealthy number at the wrong end of that scale.

Accountants might also be stifling smiles when they discover that male doctors receive under £68,000 in basic pay, while the women are £10,000 worse off. In our terms, this makes doctors equivalent to mid-range managers at larger firms, although the opportunities for paid overtime probably make a big difference to the figures that go on tax returns.

The scope of the review, perhaps controversially to be carried out by the President of the Royal College of Physicians, given that Jane Dacre might have a vested interest, is wide.

The issues that are perceived to stop a woman from competing directly with what should be her male counterparts are identified as: 

  • Working patterns and their impact on those in the medical profession
  • Impact of motherhood on careers and progression
  • Care arrangements and their affordability, and issues around being a carer
  • Access to flexible working
  • Shared parental leave, identify factors that are resulting in a slow uptake
  • The predominance of men in senior roles
  • The impact of rewards payments
  • Geographical issues.

Readers should now be able to understand why what might initially have seemed like something of a non-sequitur has a direct correlation with our own practices. My guess is that if you were to speak to a dozen women working in mid-level positions in Top 50 firms the majority would immediately recognise every single one of these factors as applying in their own cases, possibly barring the last.

The difference is that the NHS is a public body and as such the responsibility of a government minister, who quite possibly for political reasons wishes to highlight and address a perceived shortcoming in the way that they are run.

Perhaps this is now the time for some brave individual at the ICAEW and/or its peers, one or more of the Big Four or frankly anyone else at all to ask similar questions about the gender pay gap in the profession?

In reality, given that almost everybody in a position to influence such behaviour in the future has probably got a strong reason to promote the status quo, it seems unlikely that anything will change for the better in the foreseeable future and that cannot be good for a profession that is wasting so much potential talent.

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By dmmarler
31st May 2018 11:23

In a big four environment you could also add :
*restricted advertising of senior roles
*leisure activity bonding (eg golf)
*perception of long term benefit to the firm

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