Organisations with 250 or more workers must publish their figures to report gender pay gap information by April this year. So far it seems that just over 500 out of the anticipated 9000 affected groups have done so. The next quarter of the year is therefore going to be busy.
According to the BBC news Ladbrokes, Easyjet and Virgin Money are among the major companies to reveal gender pay gaps of more than 15% in favour of men for mean hourly rate. Kate Palmer reports “Women’s hourly pay rates are 52% lower than men’s at Easyjet. On average, women earn 15% less per hour at Ladbrokes and 33% less at Virgin Money.” All three firms say men and women are paid equally when in the same role.
It is important to note that whilst equal pay and the gender pay gap deal with the disparity of pay women receive in the workplace they are two different issues:
- Equal pay means that men and women in the same employment performing equal work must receive equal pay.
- The gender pay gap is a measure of the difference between men’s and women’s average earnings across an organisation or the labour market. It is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings.
Women’s Equality UK responded to the figures released: “Transparency –while welcome- is not enough to close the gender pay gap. Action is needed to address the imbalance of power which underlies the problem, and to make sure women and men’s work is valued.”
In Britain in 2016 there was an overall gender pay gap of 18.1% .Employers with low or no gender pay gaps include the British Museum (0%) and the Armed Forces (0.9%)
A report recently published by the BBC found that there was a gender pay gap in favour of men of 10.7%. Director General Lord Hall pledged to close the gap by 2020 saying that the corporation should be “an exemplar of what can be achieved when it comes to pay, fairness, gender and representation.”