In this phaleristic study, we compared the proportional representation of various industries in the NYHs from 2009 to 2018. We found that the rates of receiving an award were significantly higher for people working in sport, arts and media, and to a lesser degree in the civil and political services and in business, than for people working in healthcare or in science and technology. We also found geographical differences, with 34% of awards bestowed on people living in London or southeast England. Finally, although proportional representation has improved for women over the past decade, the proportion of women receiving the higher order awards was significantly lower than men.

Is the honours system biased?

In the period examined, the proportions of recipients from each industry each year has remained roughly similar (except for awards for sports, which increased markedly after each Olympic year). Perhaps the Cabinet Office uses quotas to determine how many awards are received in each category. Quota systems negatively bias groups with larger workforces due to dilution. The NHS is the fourth largest employer in the world with approximately 1.5 million employees, and many more people work in private health in the UK.12 Assigning the same proportion of NYHs to the health industry as other smaller industries would reduce the chances of people in healthcare receiving an award. The higher rates of receiving an NYH in other industries than in healthcare might therefore be due to dilution rather than bias. The science and technology sector, however, is under-represented. This group has a similar size workforce to civil and political services and nearly double the size of sport but was less likely to receive an NYH than both industries.

Gender differences might be due to bias. This has been tackled to some extent by the increasing proportion of women recipients over the past 10 years (fig 2). But the low number of women receiving the higher order awards compared with men indicates that more needs to be done. Gender inequalities are not unique to the honours system. International evidence shows persistent under-representation of women in the film industry,13 corporate leadership,1415 and medicine.16 A 2017 study analysed the recipients of awards from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation over the past 48 years, finding that women were substantially under-represented and that, strikingly, no female physician received an award in the most prestigious categories in 40 of the 48 year history of the ceremonies.16

Initiatives have been developed to target gender inequity in different industries.171819 But clearly more needs to be done. The Cabinet Office has recognised the under-representation of women and vowed to “step up efforts in outreach work, targeting women’s business and community networks to raise awareness of the [honours] system, and encourage nominations from those groups.”9

The Parliamentary Public Administration Select Committee’s 2012 report criticised the honours system as being focused on rewarding people for simply “doing their day job.”20 In particular, it noted that Whitehall bureaucrats and other senior figures, such as council chief executives, traditionally made a strong showing in the honours. The report said that too few honours were being awarded to ordinary citizens for the extraordinary contributions they make to their communities, which is what the system should be for. The report recommended that there should be no automatic honours for people who hold a certain post or for celebrities and sports stars at a certain level, which “too often seemed to still be the case.” Our results show that this over-representation probably exists, particularly in sport, arts and media, and civil and political services compared with healthcare, science and technology, and to a lesser extent education.