With face to the deadline; tackling the gender pay-gap in NHS is more about restructuring the ethics
United Kingdom: All organizations affiliated to NHS with more than 250 employees will have to publish a gender pay disparity data and submit it to Government Equalities Office latest by 4th of April. This will be the first time in the history of Great Britain that such a step is being taken and implemented mandatorily across all private and public sector bodies. Scotland and Wales have already published their figures. The public sector bodies in Great Britain are supposed to publish their reports by the end of this week.
The Government Equalities Office has stated the purpose of the reports to be resourceful in its quest to better understand wage disparity and eventually abolishing it. However, despite being warned about the legal implications many upper-tier district councils and two-thirds of NHS trusts have not come up with their reports.
Based on a report by Office of National Statistics, the national median gender pay disparity is pegged at 18.4%. Many critics believe strongly that politically motivated organizations have tried to alter the reports in an attempt to make it appear more inclusive of equal pay. With a large number of female work-force under its helm, the NHS trusts and councils have an unrealistically high pay-gap at senior levels which is totally unacceptable and needs to be revamped.
A total of 196 councils have reported so far on the issue of which 19 councils have pay-gap median higher than the national average. The comparison stands the same for six NHS trusts. Fifteen councils and 4 NHS trusts have the disparity higher than 20%.
For local government, Tonbridge and Malling borough council have registered the highest disparity at 33.6%, followed by Breckland district council and Dartford council with 31.3% and 29.7% respectively.
One can clearly see how the pay scales are favouring men in most areas, some councils and NHS trusts have surprisingly higher pay-gap median favouring women. Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust has women’s median pay as high as 17.3% compared to men. Bradford district care foundation trust and Sussex community NHS Foundation 4.6% and 3.8% higher pay-disparity favouring women.
The key causes for median pay-disparity are pay discrimination, the excess of men compared to women in high paying jobs, and the dearth of high-quality part-time jobs flexible shift hours.
The situation we are in right now in terms of gender-pay disparity is certainly disappointing as it points towards the fact that there is a lot of room for improvement. Despite having so many labour rules, laws and pay scales in place the gender pay-gap is staring wide at our faces, begging the question: Will we be able to close the gap more in the coming years?
Simultaneously, there is hope for NHS as many councils and NHS trusts that have managed to achieve this in recent years and continue to push the envelope for better working conditions and rightful pay for NHS staffers.