Sex

Workforce Breakdown 

While the protected characteristic in the Act is “Sex”, we ask our colleagues to identify their gender on our staff engagement form and eESS, the HR system, rather than their sex. Therefore, in this report, we refer to gender in relation to our employees. If referring to other groups of people, we may refer to sex or gender, dependent on how the data on them are presented. 

As in previous monitored periods NHS GJ’s workforce continues to be predominantly female (1617 headcount), with women representing 74.0% of the workforce as at 31 March 2023. This continues the pattern of previous years: 

While gender split within NHS GJ is 74.0% female to 26.0% male, across Scotland as a whole the Scottish Government’s statistics website (https://statistics.gov.scot/home) forecast that as at 30 June 2019 (the latest date the forecast is available) the split for working age people (aged 16 to 64) would be 50.8% female and 49.2% male. Closer to home the split for the population of the West Dunbartonshire Council area (in which NHS GJ is situated) on 30 June 2019 was forecast to be 52.0% female to 48.0% male for the working age population. 

As mentioned in the previous paragraph the split in Scotland is roughly 50:50. However, the largest job family in NHS GJ is “Nursing and Midwifery”, which has traditionally been a female dominated profession, resulting in a higher proportion of female to male staff. The larger proportion of job families within NHS GJ have a female majority, with only “Medical and Dental” and “Support Services” having more male than female staff: 

Participation 

In the table below, which considers the proportion of whole time and part time colleagues by gender as a proportion of the total headcount, we can see that 72.1% of all employees hold full time contracts: 37.5 hours per week for Agenda for Change and Senior Managers; 40 hours per week for medical and dental staff, while 27.9% hold part time posts. 48.9% of the total headcount is full time and female, while 2.7% is part time and male. 

The table below looks at the proportion of each gender as part of the total number or either part or whole time headcount. When considering part time workers, women are over-represented, making up 90.1% of all part time workers, when they make up 74.0% of all workers. Men are under-represented – comprising 9.9% of all part time workers by headcount and 26.0% of total headcount. 

eESS does not allow for intersex staff to report as such, despite intersex people accounting for up to 1.7% of people globally. Intersex is a sex where the physical and biological sex characteristics of an individual do not conform to either the male or female sex, an example of which is Klinefelter (47, XXY) syndrome. 

Pay Gap 

In this report we will also look at the pay gap in relation to gender. The table below shows the average hourly pay split by gender for members of the workforce on Agenda for Change, Medical and Dental, and Senior Managers pay scales: 

The average hourly rate for women is £5.57 lower than for men (£18.75 v £24.32). Much of this differential can be accounted for due to the greater number of men in the higher paid Medical and Dental job family at Consultant grade. This means that higher paid female staff tend to be outliers, more so than their male counterparts. 

Recruitment Activity 

In 2022/2023 there were 403 new starters, excluding bank workers. Of these 290 (72.0%) identified as female, and 113 (28.0%) identified as male. This is roughly proportionate to their representation in the overall workforce (74.0% and 26.0% respectively). 

Training Activity 

Between April 2022 and March 2023 the NHS GJ workforce attended 12975 training events, with female members of staff attending 10290 (79.3%) of these, and male colleagues attending 2685 (20.7%). This means that male staff members attended proportionately fewer training events than their female counterparts when compared to the proportion of the staff body that the comprise (26.0%). 

Career Progression 

The monitored period saw a total of 139 promotions and increases in bandings among NHS GJ staff. Of these 105 (75.5%) were female and 34 (24.5%) were male, which means that promotion by gender was almost exactly the same as the proportion of the workforce each gender comprises. 

Leavers 

Of the 329 people who left during the monitored period 77.5% were female and 22.5% male as a proportion of headcount, indicating that males were slightly under-represented as leavers, as they made up 24.0% of the workforce at the end of March. 

Workforce Monitoring Report 2023