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Mothers In Medicine Podcast · Mothers In Medicine

The Gender Pay Gap: Dame Professor Jane Dacre

August 20, 2023·27 min·2 clips
Every time a woman takes time off for childcare, she hits the 'motherhood penalty'—a permanent pay cut
Dr Shola opens the conversation with the pressure of being a mother and a doctor. She says women make up 77% of the NHS workforce and asks why preparing people for parenthood and supporting them through parenthood is not treated more seriously by NHS employing organisations. The discussion then turns to the gender pay gap in medicine. Male doctors make as much as 18% more than women, a gap described as larger than the figures for accountants and teachers. Professor Dame Jane Dacre treats the pay gap as a numerical measure of inequality and says doctors are good at looking at numbers and seeing how they change. One practical step is to check a trust's gender pay gap. She says there is a BBC website app where you can enter an organisation and find the figure, then take it to the trust board and ask what the trust is doing to bring it down. The conversation also turns to flexibility in the workplace. Professor Dame Jane Dacre points to the many replies she received after posting about how difficult medicine can be for parents, and those replies highlighted a lack of flexibility. She asks why clinics have to start at fixed times that clash with childcare, why trusts do not provide better childcare, why they do not provide nursery places, and why those nursery places do not open out of hours. The episode keeps returning to the same point: supporting people through parenthood should be taken more seriously in the NHS. It closes on a human note, with the idea that children can be proud of parents who enjoy their work and do a good professional job.

As heard by us

A clear, practical look at pay inequality and the childcare fixes medicine still resists.

This episode takes the gender pay gap in medicine seriously from the start, and the opening claim that male doctors make as much as 18% more than women sets the tone.

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Why you'd press play

For when the NHS gender pay gap stops sounding abstract and starts sounding like your workweek.

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