Gender Pay Gap at Over 500 Companies Revealed

The extent of the gender pay gap in the UK is becoming increasingly apparent.

Government figures show that women are paid nearly 33% less per hour at Virgin Money and 52% less at easyJet.

Both companies have stated that men and women are paid equally in the same role.

Under new legislation, the British Government has made it mandatory for all organisations with 250 or more workers to report annually on their gender pay gap. Businesses are required to publish the first set of data by April. So far 529 companies have done so.

Unfortunately, the results are disheartening.

Nearly half of the organisations pay men at least 10% more per hour. 426 of them pay men more, on average, per hour.

Men are paid nearly 65% more per hour at high street fashion store Phase Eight.

A statement on the Phase Eight website states that:

“The figures result from the fact that, as a women’s fashion retailer, the staff in our stores are overwhelmingly female, whilst our corporate head office staff (whose pay rates are typically higher) are more evenly split between men and women.

“We are confident that women and men are paid equally for doing the equivalent jobs across our business.”

easyJet and Virgin Money are both aiming to add more senior female members of staff to their teams.

For example, only 6% of easyjet’s UK pilots are women whereas 69% of lower-paid cabin crew are women.

In response, easyJet said it had set a target that one in five of new entrant pilots should be female by 2020. Virgin Money hopes to achieve a 50:50 gender balance by the same year.

It is important to note that several of the organisations that have already published their figures reported low or no gender pay gap, including the British Museum (0%) and the UK Armed Forces (0.9%).

The gender pay gap is the pay discrepancy between men and women irrespective of their position. This is different from equal pay when companies are required to ensure that men and women carrying out the same roles are paid for the amount of work they do.


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Author Alice Murray

Alice Murray is a Content Creator at Jobbio with a passion for Employer Branding and Graduate Culture. She's a keen traveller and a self-proclaimed lazy runner.

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