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.
JP Morgan, Macquarie Group and Ryanair are some of the companies in the UK to have disclosed significant gender pay gaps under new regulations. The government has also announced that it will introduce a mandatory code for employers which would require them to publish their own figures on how much they spend on employing women. Boux Avenue lingerie group paid men 75.7% more than women per hour. Ryanair’s gap of 72% was the biggest in the airline sector, while Macquarie was the worst well-known financial offender, with a 60% median gap. JP Morgan had the worst gap of the major banks, at a median of 54%.