The Equality & Human Rights Commission published guidance in 2016 on gathering and using Employee Information. In this, the Commission explains:
The three main causes of the pay gap between women and men are occupational segregation, a lack of flexible working opportunities, and discrimination in pay and grading structures. All of these factors which underpin the pay gap can be addressed, to some degree, by an authority’s own employment policies and practices.
In 2022 and as a follow up to a 2021 look at performance on Equal Pay, Equality Here, Now decided to bring some scrutiny to bear on what NHS Boards were doing to comply with the requirements to tackle occupational segregation. The research, published in June 2022, found that:
This entrenched form of silo working by NHS Boards, the failure by government to deliver promised prioritised work on tackling occupational segregation, and the failure of the EHRC to enforce legislation, is quite simply state-sponsored neglect of closing the equal pay gap in the NHS.