All UK companies with more than 250 employees had to report details of the gap between the median hourly rate paid to male and female staff by midnight on Wednesday. Here are some of those with the biggest gaps, and some of the later filers.
- Boux Avenue lingerie group, which is part of the empire of the Ryman owner and former Dragon’s Den regular, Theo Paphitis, reported that women on average earn 75.7% less per hour than men on a median basis – taking the midpoint of all the hourly rates for women and comparing it with the midpoint for men. The gap, the biggest for a well-known company, reflects the fact that the vast majority of the retailer’s staff are female shop workers. A similar pattern is seen at other fashion chains where shoppers are usually served by women, but a small group of men are employed at head office, such as Phase Eight, where the median pay gap is 54.5% and the exercise clothing chain Sweaty Betty, where 99% of the staff are women and the median gap is 68%.
- Apple filed its figures on Wednesday revealing that 71% of its top-earning employees were men. Men are paid more across each of the three separate entities for which the company must legally report, including Apple UK – where the median pay gap is 24%. At Apple Retail the gap is 5%.
- Ryanair revealed a gender pay gap of 72% – the worst in the airline industry – with women making up only 3% of the top quarter of earners at the airline. The figure is about four times the UK average and outstrips that of easyJet, which reported a 45% gap. Most of Ryanair’s management and administration are based in Ireland and so excluded from the figures, and more than 95% of the firm’s UK-based staff are pilots or cabin crew. Only eight of Ryanair’s 554 UK-based pilots are female, while women make up more than two-thirds of low-paid cabin crew.
Quick GuideWhat is the gender pay gap, and what must UK companies report?
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What is the gender pay gap?
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women. The figure is expressed as a proportion of men’s earnings. According to the ONS, the gap between what UK male and female workers earn – based on median hourly earnings for all workers – was 17.9% in April 2018, down from 18.4% in April 2017. Data in 2018 showed that men were paid more than women in 7,795 out of 10,016 companies and public bodies in Britain.
What is being published?
All companies and some public sector bodies in Great Britain, except Northern Ireland, with more than 250 employees had to report their gender pay gap to the Government Equalities Office for the first time by by 4 April 2018. The second year of gender pay gap reports - and the first indicator of how public bodies and companies are performing - must be filed by April 2019
What’s the difference between the mean and the median figures?
Commonly known as the average, the mean is calculated by adding up the wages of all employees and dividing that figure by the number of employees. The mean gender pay gap is the difference between mean male pay and mean female pay.
The median gap is the difference between the employee in the middle of the range of male wages and the employee in the middle of the range of female wages. Typically the median is the more representative figure, because the mean can be skewed by a handful of highly paid employees.
What will happen if companies don’t report?
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said that, while it would approach employers informally at first if they failed to publish figures by the deadline, businesses could ultimately face “unlimited fines and convictions”. However, information published following a freedom of information request by the Guardian showed that no companies have been fined to date despite hundreds failing to accurately file their gender pay gap figures on time.
- Macquarie Group’s corporate division revealed that women earn 60% an hour less than men in median terms with a bonus gap of 83% – making the investment firm the most imbalanced well-known financial institution. . Nearly 90% of those in the best-paid jobs are male while women make up 58% of the lowest paid.
- JP Morgan revealed the biggest gender pay gap among the major banks with a median of 54%. The bank said that the gap was much smaller for its UK business as a whole – including legal entities with less than 250 employees that are not included in the legislation – at 26%. That compares with a 36.4% median gap at Goldman Sachs and a 29% gap at HSBC. The gap at all of the banks is prompted by the prevalence of men in the highest-paid jobs. At JP Morgan 78% of those in the highest-paid roles are men.
- Sussex Learning Trust, which operates two schools in West Sussex, revealed that women earn nearly 63% less an hour than men on a median basis, the widest for an academy group. Only one man and no women received a bonus. The trust said it had a large number of employees in roles that tended to be gender biased – such as catering, administration and student support – with women making up 93% of the lowest-paid jobs compared with 51.6% of the top paid. A similar pattern was reflected across academy trusts where women face median hourly pay deficits of more than 50%.
- Telegraph Media Group (TMG) pays women 35% less than men on average, the biggest gender pay gap of any UK newspaper publisher or broadcaster to have reported official figures. Almost three-quarters of TMG’s highest-paid staff are male, with women making up just 26.9% of the top quartile of earners. At the other end of the pay scale, women make up 61.6% of the bottom quartile. Men also received bonuses of almost twice those paid to women on average. At Guardian News & Media the median gap is 12.1%.
- North Hertfordshire district council had the worst median gender pay gap among local councils at 34%. The authority – whose workforce is 65% women and 35% men – said 61% of its top roles were taken by men, while women dominated the lowest-paid roles, such as in administration. A spokesperson said: “Many of these jobs are part-time and/or are suitable for flexible working, which makes them attractive to women with caring responsibilities.”
- Sports Direct revealed that women at the retail group are paid 6.3% less on a median basis, well below the national average. The bonus gap was much larger, with women receiving 45.7% less. A third of those in the best-paid jobs are women while men make up 43% of those in the lowest-paid jobs. The figures at Sports Direct do not include agency staff who work in its warehouses.
- Yellow Dot was one of the firms that paid women far more than men on a median basis. Men employed at the childcare company earn 81% less on average than women, making up 18% of the lowest paid compared with just 3% of the highest. Yellow Dot said it was “committed to fairness, equality and inclusion” but conceded it had a big gender pay gapthat was getting worse.