Some companies claim their pay gaps are ‘skewed’ due to few male employees

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A quarter of companies and public sector bodies have a pay gap of more than 20% in favour of men, according to new gender pay gap figures.

There was no significant improvement in the gender pay gap between 2017 and 2018 with the gap shrinking slightly from 9.7% to 9.6%.

Almost eight in 10 companies still pay their male employees more, leading one MP to say Britain still has a “long way to go” to tackle the gap.

All organisations with more than 250 employees have to publish their gender pay gap. The deadline for the public sector was 31 March, while charities and companies have until midnight on 4 April to file.

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Of the 9,961 companies which had filed by 5pm on 4 April, 7,755 paid male employees more than female staff based on median hourly pay.

Almost a third of businesses had gaps which were worse than the national average for full- and part-time workers, which the Office of National Statistics calculates at 17.9%.

More than a quarter of companies pay women over 20% less than men based on median hourly pay. Just 1.5% pay male employees 20% less than their female staff.

The MP Rachel Reeves, chair of the business, energy and industrial strategy select committee, said: “The figures show there is a long way to go to tackle the gender pay gap.

“Too few businesses simply file the stats and then carry on as usual, failing to examine why they aren’t attracting female talent, why these pay gaps exist in their firms, and what they need to do to change it.”

The Labour party, whose workforce consists of 237 women and 261 men, reported a median gender pay gap of 3%. Jennie Formby, general secretary, said she was proud to lead an organisation taking gender pay seriously.

The Fawcett Society said the persistence of the gap was “disappointing, but not surprising”.

“The regulations are not tough enough. It’s time for action plans, not excuses,” said Sam Smethers, its chief executive.

“Employers need to set out a five-year strategy for how they will close their gender pay gaps, monitoring progress and results.

“But we also need to tackle all the causes of the pay gap – introduce more generous leave for fathers that they can afford to take, make every job flexible by default, unless there is a strong business case not to do so, and deal with any outstanding pay discrimination that employers may find.”

Since 2017, companies with more than 250 employees are required to report their gender pay gap. Guardian analysis used the median hourly pay gap, which is calculated by lining up male and female wages and comparing the difference between the number that falls in the middle for each gender.

Company data also shows a slight improvement in the second year of reporting. The median hourly gap grew in 4,215 companies, and shrunk in 3,840.

Vida Healthcare, a private care home provider, paid women just 21p for every £1 men earned, the highest gap of any UK company. Vida Healthcare said the figure was not representative of the company.

Another healthcare company, Care Fertility Group, reported a median gap of 66% – up 19 percentage points on last year. It explained that 81% of male employees were directors, doctors or in IT, most of whom fell into the upper salary quartile.

Angela Regan, its HR director, said that while men make up only 11% of the Care workforce, they account for 30% of its highest-paid quartile.

“However, of Care’s highest paid quartile, 70% are female, suggesting that women are able to progress their careers to our most senior roles.

“We are confident that we do not have an issue of ‘equal pay’ within the organisation and we are committed to ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to progress to the most senior or highly-paid positions.”

Other companies with high gaps included not-for-profit Suffolk GP Federation at 75% and HR service New Millennia Payroll at 74.3%.

Some airlines also posted large gaps, including easyJet where the gap rose to 47.9% in the latest reported period, and Tui Airways at 42.5%. Ryanair reported a gap of 64.4%, down from 71.8% gap in 2017.

A number of fashion companies filed large gaps, including women’s clothing brand Sweaty Betty which reported a 66.6% pay gap. It stated that women occupy 96% of its highest-paid and 100% of its lowest-paid jobs.

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It explained: “Unfortunately, due to low numbers of men in our business, our reporting figures are skewed.”

Karen Millen reported a 53% gap, up from 49% in the last reporting period. Online retailers Missguided and Asos reported gaps of 46% and 33% respectively.

However, other fashion brands managed gaps much closer to zero. Uniqlo reported a 2.9% difference in favour of men, while Nike Retail’s gap was 4%.

As companies in Great Britain filed their gender pay gap figures, research by HR services company ADP revealed more than two-thirds of UK workers said they would consider looking for another job if they found out there was an unfair gender pay gap at their organisation.

The ADP Workforce View in Europe 2019 surveyed over 10,000 employees in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

Additional reporting by Anisa Holmes