More big companies have been found to have wide gender pay gaps as firms report on what they pay male and female employees ahead of an April deadline.

The Co-operative Bank, easyJet and Virgin Money are among those with a double-digit gap in their mean hourly pay rates between male and female workers.



Both private and public sector organisations as well as charities with more than 250 employees are required to submit their pay figures to the government by April.

The move is intended to highlight the worst instances and encourage employers to address the situation.

The gender pay gap refers to the difference between what men and women working for an organisation earn regardless of their roles, rather than men and women being paid different amounts for the same role.

One of the widest pay gaps – 51.7% – has been reported by easyJet. The discrepancy is largely accounted for by the fact that most of the airline’s pilots are male. The average salary for such a role is more than £90,000.

More than two-thirds of easyJet cabin crew are women. The average annual salary for crew is less than £25,000.

The airline says it pays men and women equally for the same work and has vowed to increase the number of female pilots it recruits.

Other firms with wide gender pay gaps in favour of men, on the mean hourly pay measure, include:

Land Securities – 33.3%



PricewaterhouseCoopers – 33.1%



Virgin Money – 32.5%



Lendlease – 30.4%



Co-operative Bank – 30.3%



Shell – 21.7%



Compass Group – 17.2%



Ladbrokes Coral Group – 15%



Public sector organisations have also reported wide gender pay gaps, including:

Bank of England – 21%

Department for Transport – 16.9%



Department for Exiting the European Union – 15.3%

Department of Health – 14.2%

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – 11.5%

According to the Office for National Statistics, the median UK gender pay gap fell to 9.1% for the year to April 2017 for full-time workers.

The figure has fallen by nearly 50% since the ONS began collecting such data in 1997.