Female doctors will face widening pay gaps with male colleagues and may be forced to quit medicine because the new junior doctors’ contract discriminates against women, especially mothers, leaders of the profession have said.

Ministers are facing a backlash from senior female doctors over the contract, amid claims that it shows that David Cameron’s promises to help women in the workforce are false.

Two female presidents of medical royal colleges, which professionally represent different types of doctors, say the government’s own equality analysis of the contract is incompatible with its stated aim of boosting women in business.

Prof Jane Dacre and Clare Marx, the presidents of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons respectively, voiced their unease after the Department of Health (DH) published its own assessment of how the contract would affect equality.

In a joint statement, they said: “We are very concerned by the language in the government’s own equality analysis of the contract, which warns that features of the new contract ‘impact disproportionately on women’. Recent commitments from government to support women in business are greatly welcome. We view the wording of the equality analysis as incompatible with this approach.”

The DH analysis, published on Thursday, has intensified the long-running dispute between the profession and ministers over the contract. There is particular unease about its statement that “while there are features of the new contract that impact disproportionately on women, of which some we expect to be advantageous and others disadvantageous, we do not consider that this would amount to indirect discrimination as the impacts can be comfortably justified”.

A high court battle is looming over the contract after the British Medical Association last Thursday launched a judicial review of the legality of its imposition. It claims it was unlawful because Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, did not properly consider its effect on equality before deciding in February to impose it on all 45,000 doctors below consultant level in England from August.



Dr Maureen Baker, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, said she shared concerns about the new contract because it “has the potential to adversely affect women doctors. We were particularly astonished to read the line in the equality impact assessment that states: ‘Any indirect adverse effect on women is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.’ As a college, we are dismayed that the EIA concludes, and apparently accepts, a policy that is nothing more than a retrograde step in addressing the gender pay gap in medicine.”

Baker said: “I’ve always been incredibly proud of our NHS – general practice in particular – for being streets ahead of the corporate world and being true leaders in terms of gender inequality, so anything that threatens this must be taken very seriously.”

The Medical Women’s Federation (MWF), which represents female doctors, said it was disappointed and dismayed by the DH’s analysis of the contract. “The analysis acknowledges that changes in the contract will disadvantage women, particularly those training part-time, carers and lone parents,” it said.

Under the new contract, which has sparked three strikes by junior doctors since January, their normal working hours will be extended from 7pm on weekdays to 10pm and will include Saturday from 7am to 5pm for the first time. A fourth strike lasting 48 hours is due to start next Wednesday, followed by two all-out strikes covering all areas of medical care on 26 and 27 April.

The MWF is worried that will force female doctors who are mothers to try and find childcare at those times. The new contract could breach junior doctors’ right to a family life under the Human Rights Act, the federation suggested.

Dr Roshana Mehdian, one of the leaders of the junior doctors’ campaign against the contract, criticised the DH for saying that women should make “informal childcare arrangements” if they are affected by having to work more antisocial hours. “This is ludicrous in the 21st century when childcare costs are spiralling and access to out-of-hours childcare is limited. This discriminates against women, single parents and working couples. It is a regressive and draconian contract, undoing years of work to improve equality.”

Dr Rachel Clarke, another prominent junior doctor, said: “Until now, female doctors’ salaries have kept pace with men’s because small annual pay awards prevent part-time doctors, of whom the vast majority are women, earning less than their full-time colleagues over time. But the new contract strips these safeguards away [and in the future] we will see ever-widening gender pay gaps in medicine. For Cameron, the alleged champion of women, women’s salaries are mere collateral damage [to the contract]”.

The DH denied that female doctors would lose out. “This contract is a huge step forward for achieving fairness for all trainee doctors”, a spokeswoman said. “For the first time, junior doctors will be paid and rewarded solely on the basis of their own hard work and achievement. That is ultimately what employers and the BMA themselves want and everyone deserves: a level playing field.”