Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s weekly gender pay gap report. This week more than 700 companies reported the difference between what they pay men and women.
With two weeks to go, the deadline to report is fast approaching. All public and private sector organisations in Britain with 250 or more employees must report the difference between what they pay men and women by 4 April. You can also tell us how the gender pay gap has affected your career in the form below.
To date less than a third of companies have provided figures, with 2,781 businesses out of the 9,000 expected to report filing to date.
So far more than three-quarters of businesses pay men more than women on average, as 77% report men’s median pay as higher than that of their female colleagues. Only 9% of businesses have closed the pay gap between the sexes and 14% pay women more than men.
FTSE 100 companies
The UK’s biggest publicly traded companies have also been slow to report their gender pay gap. Just over half of the UK’s biggest businesses have reported the difference between what they pay men and women.
In the past week HSBC, the biggest company in the FTSE 100, revealed the largest gender gap in the banking sector. Women were paid 29% less than their male colleagues at the bank in 2017.
When considering the mean figures, men were paid more than twice as much as women with a gender pay gap of 59%. The gap is even more stark when considering bonus pay, with a gap of 86%. For every £100,000 paid to a man a woman would have received £14,000 in bonus pay at the bank in 2017.
Among other companies which reported this week:
- Investment bank Goldman Sachs International reported it pays women 36% less than what it pays men on average. The gap jumps to 68% for bonus pay. Goldman also reported very few women in the bank’s upper echelons, with only 17% women in the top pay quartile. The bank says it has “significant work to do”, to close the pay gap and has committed to increasing the proportion of women in upper management to 30% by 2023.
- Legal firms Slaughter and May and Berwin Leighton Paisner also reported median pay gaps of 39% and 37%. Men at Slaughter and May are also paid more than twice as much as their female colleagues in bonus pay, with a gap of 55%. Slaughter and May excluded secretarial staff from its press release, resulting in a pay gap in favour of women.
- British American Tobacco reported it pays women 36% less than it pays its male workers on average. Men at BAT are also paid more than twice as much as their female colleagues when it comes to bonus pay. The company says it will, “press hard to improve our representation of senior women in the company”.
- The UK’s largest private IVF provider, Care Fertility Group, reported a median pay gap of 47% and a median bonus gap of 54%. The mean bonus difference is 97% despite women dominating every pay quartile.
Share your thoughts
We want to know about your experience of the gender pay gap in the workplace. Has it affected your career? Share your thoughts by filling in the encrypted form below, anonymously if you wish. Only the Guardian has access to your submissions. One of our reporters may contact you and we will feature some of your experiences in our reporting.
