International Women’s Day: Beyond bikini medicine and the gender pay gap for women in pharma

By Chris Wheal

March 07, 2024

Miriam Kenrick and Sarah Sowerby Formed Women in Pharma after lockdown.

International Women’s Day tomorrow, Friday 8 March, comes just a week after the CEO of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Emma Walmsley, became one of the top-paid CEOs in the FTSE 100. Her total package rose 50% to £12.7m, mainly thanks to a higher share bonus payout off the back of the drugmaker’s stellar performance.

Walmsley is thought to be the highest paid of the 10 female FTSE 100 chief executives. She’s not alone in GSK. A quick look at GSK’s gender pay report reveals that women earn £1.04 for every £1 that men earn. Women’s median hourly pay is 3.9% higher than men’s and women’s mean hourly pay is 0.2% higher than men’s.

That might give the impression the glass ceiling is cracked, if not shattered. But a little deeper dig tells a different story and there are many issues for groups like Women in Pharma to tackle.

Pay and promotion

Pay and promotion remain thorny issues. Whenever a company’s gender pay gap shows men in the lead, the high pay of the top brass is always rolled out as an excuse. And having one highly paid woman at the top similarly distorts the numbers equally.

The official numbers reveals that, when it comes to bonuses, women at GSK earn £1.04 for every £1 that men earn when comparing median bonus pay. Their median bonus pay is 4% higher than men’s. However, when comparing mean (average) bonus pay, women’s mean bonus pay is 1.9% lower than men’s. And 100% of men and women got bonuses at GSK.

Walmsley’s basic pay was £1.6m with more than £10m in bonuses.

Women at the top

GSK reported that of its highest paid (the upper hourly pay quarter) 46.8% are women. In the middle bracket 44.8% are women.

By comparison, AstraZeneca’s latest report (a year earlier) found that women earned 91p for every £1 that men earned when comparing median hourly pay. Their median hourly pay was 9.1% lower than men’s. Women’s mean (average) hourly pay was 9% lower than men’s.

Women occupied 41.2% of the highest paid jobs but 50.1% of the lowest paid jobs. In the middle bracket, women had 48% of the roles. 

When it came to bonuses women pocketed 82p for every £1 that men trousered when comparing median bonus pay. Women’s median bonus pay was 18.2% lower than men’s and their mean bonus pay was 37.7% lower than men’s. Also, 82.4% of women got a bonus while 85.2% of men did.

GSK provided the UK government with an additional statement but AstraZeneca didn’t.

Gender pay gaps

The UK’s Office for National Statistics reports: “In 2023, the gap among full-time employees increased to 7.7%, up from 7.6% in 2022. This is still below the gap of 9.0% before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2019. Among all employees, the gender pay gap decreased to 14.3% in 2023, from 14.4% in 2022, and is still below the levels seen in 2019 (17.4%).”

Eurostat reports that Ireland’s gender pay gap in 2021 was 9.9%. That put Ireland well down in the bottom third and well below half the worst offenders. Eurostat has the differing pay gaps by sector for nearly all EU member countries, but Ireland and Greece are the two countries that do not report by sector. 

Volunteer-run website Irish Gender Pay Gap Portal says the gap fell to 9.6% in 2022. Picking a company at random, AbbVie Sligo has seen its mean hourly pay gap fall from 11.6% in 2022 to 7.6% in 2023. Its median dropped from 10.9% to 9.9% while its mean bonus fell from 19.1% to 10.6% and its median bonus gap fell from 18.2% to 6%.

But it’s not just about pay and promotion.

Women in Pharma

UK support and campaigning body Women in Pharma (WIP) is concerned about the science too. Miriam Kenrick and Sarah Sowerby formed the group after lockdown. They are not just about supporting women within the industry with events, mentoring and coaching. They want to shake up the sector.

Crucially they want legislators, regulators and senior managers to realise that men and women are biologically different and medicines and pharmaceuticals should be developed, tested and targeted with that in mind. And those differences apply to what’s in the test tube and who is scrutinising it.

“I see a lot of high-achieving women who are perfectionist people pleasers,” says Kenrick. “They work extra-hard to prove they are worthy of the job they are doing. They don’t shout about their achievements and yet they have often also had to juggle family commitments. That leads to extra stress.”

But it’s the science that really opened Kenrick’s eyes. “Men often deal with stress through anger but women hold it in. Men have a pretty consistent level of testosterone all day and varying only slightly through their lives. Women have different levels of oestrogen throughout each month and when those levels are low, they rely on adrenalin for their energy. This can cause chronic stress, chronic inflammation and impact the auto-immune system.”

Beyond Bikini Medicine

The way women’s bodies react to many other things is also different to men. Medicine, the pharmaceutical industry and regulators have worked on the basis that apart from the obviously different parts of a women’s body – those covered by a bikini – men and women are the same. That has to change and led to the Beyond Bikini Medicine (BBM) campaign.

The campaign says: “We unconsciously operate within the deep-seated, societal belief, that biological women are ‘smaller men’ with different reproductive organs. Of course, makes no sense when you take a conscious, scientific perspective. After all we know that (almost) every cell in our bodies is (usually) either XX or XY. And our whole bodies are influenced predominantly by testosterone OR oestrogen. 

“Which means men and women can experience diseases differently and treatments might work differently. #beyondbikinimedicine is simply asking everyone in health and life sciences to ask:

• Does the disease I’m interested in affect men and women differently?
• How will we bring this knowledge into our study designs and outcomes?
• Does the menstrual cycle, hormonal contraception, or the menopause affect the performance of our drug or health solution?”

Kenrick told Pharma News: “We want to change the regulatory and political environment alongside the wider industry.” There’s a poignant BBM T-shirt for sale to support the campaign.

Inspiring events

When not shouting from the rooftops, Women in Pharma tries to ‘inspire’ and ‘empower’ with top industry and related speakers. Former speakers at its Inspire events include:

• Kavita Oberoi OBE, entrepreneur
• Liz Jackson MBE , M&A expert
• Emeritus Prof. Sian Harding, Professor of Cardiac Pharmacology at Imperial College London
• Rina Newton, ABPI code and compliance expert
• Julie Worth, UK General manager Grideks Calceks 
• Anna Maxwell, CEO of Maxwellia

Coming up for WIP is its Role Model Awards taking place on Friday 15 March where there are recognising women and men who are leading the way in the industry not just by what they are doing but how they are doing it – the values they champion to help the industry evolve.  

WIP also produces a regular Loose Women in Pharma Podcast on Spotify. The latest episode featrues Bridget Gorham, health economist advising the UK government and the NHS, calculating how much economic value would be generated if women’s health conditions were better served. 

Next week Liz Sergeant shares how her more holistic approach – functional medicine and nutrition – can help with many health challenges that women typically face.

“Our next event is Empower 2 in June,” says Kenrick. And you feel sure that empower – it certainly will.

Women in Pharma’s Miriam Kenrick: my career so far 

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