The gender pay gap in the NHS

At the time of writing (3 April), 9406 businesses with more than 250 employees across the UK had reported details of the gender pay gap in their organisations as at March 2017,1 as part of the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) regulations published last year.2 This addition to the 2010 act stipulates some basic pay data: essentially, the percentage difference between men’s and women’s average hourly mean or median basic pay, the same for bonus pay, and the proportions of men and women between the quartiles of an organisation’s pay range.

With over 1.6 million staff, the NHS is the largest single employer in the UK, three times the size of the largest private sector employer, Tesco. Most NHS organisations …