Read junior doctors' 'hearfelt plea' to Michelle Obama in full

'Last year, our Prime Minister pledged to "end the gender pay gap in a generation", so no doctor can understand why he is now perfectly willing to create a new gender pay gap in the NHS, Europe’s biggest employer.'

Junior doctors have been on strike four times to protest the new contract (JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

Junior doctors have written to Michelle Obama urging her to lobby David Cameron to reverse new the contract they fear will disadvantage female doctors and result in a wider gender pay gap and fewer female doctors.

The letter, backed by over 2,200 signatories, references Mrs Obama’s work as a women’s equality advocate and her support for universal access to healthcare.

The “heartfelt plea for help” urges Mrs Obama, who is spending three days in the UK along with her husband, to “raise concerns” with the Prime Minister at their meeting in London.

The letter reads as follows:

“Dear Mrs Obama,

We are junior doctors working in the UK’s National Health Service, writing to you with a heartfelt plea for help. We believe that our causes - healthcare and equality - transcend national borders. We would therefore be most indebted to you if you could raise our concerns with our Prime Minister, David Cameron, when you meet with him later today.

Universal health care coverage for all citizens and equality for women, are both subjects that you have been an inspirational advocate for. The successes of your programme "Let Girls Learn" speaks to us all as parents and carers, and as professionals who came into medicine believing that we are all equal.

The UK government is currently seeking to impose a new contract on all junior doctors (approximately the first 10-15 years of our careers) working in England. We believe that the new contract will put both doctors and our patients at risk, leaving us too exhausted and demoralised to do our jobs safely. Such is the depth of our feeling on this matter, we have now been on strike four times: a situation we all deeply regret.

One distressing aspect of the new contract is its discriminatory nature. Our government's own assessment of the contract acknowledges that doctors who are women, single parents, carers or disabled are all discriminated against. The government does not try to hide this, but has instead brushed it off as collateral damage: "A proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end". Furthermore, according to the government's own analysis, the increased anti-social working hours in the contract, with no extra remuneration, "will disproportionately disadvantage those who need to arrange childcare". It is also anti-family.

Last year, our Prime Minister pledged to "end the gender pay gap in a generation", so no doctor can understand why he is now perfectly willing to create a new gender pay gap in the NHS, Europe’s biggest employer.

To the government's embarrassment, the outcry provoked by this casual acceptance of gender discrimination has spread beyond the UK to the United Nations. A director at the World Health Organisation, having read the contract and its equality assessment, stated that the new contract contravenes the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Its "regressive policies", he explained, mean "gender equity for junior doctors is at risk" and "female doctors will face widening pay gaps with male colleagues and may be forced to quit medicine".

Britain has the sixth largest gender pay gap in the European Union, meaning that for every pound a man in Britain earns, a woman on average receives only 80 pence. That equates to women in Britain working for free for 57 days of the year. We do not want Britain to be a country in which our children grow up seeing their mothers paid less than a man, for doing exactly the same job.

We therefore appeal to you to use whatever influence you may have with the Prime Minister to encourage him to listen to our concerns and act accordingly.

Yours sincerely,

Miss Roshana Mehdian, Trauma and Orthopaedic Registrar, London

Dr Rachel Clarke, Core Medical Trainee, Oxford

Dr Taryn Youngstein, Rheumatology Registrar, London

Dr Dagan Lonsdale, ITU Registrar, London

And 2200 additional signatories”