industry focus
Gender pay gap grows
With one of the Government’s flagship rules on pay equality scheduled to come into force in 2018, just one per cent of the UK’s large companies have complied with the new pay transparency rules so far, according to a new study from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).
The CMI Report will make interesting reading across the retail sector where staff are predominantly female, although senior managers still tend to be male. The report argues that the pay gap between male and female managers is worsening with women earning an average £12,000 less than their male colleagues.
The gender pay gap for the UK’s 3.3m managers – across all sectors - is nearly £3,000 bigger than previous data had suggested, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and XpertHR found. As a result, it is believed the average female manager earns £12,000 less than her male counterpart.
The figures follow the introduction of the Government’s reporting regulations in April, which require large companies with more than 250 employees to disclose the size of their gender pay gap. As of last week, just 77 of the 7,850 companies had fulfilled their obligations, according to the CMI.
A survey of 118,385 managers from 423 organisations also revealed women were far more likely to fill junior management positions than men, with 66 per cent in such roles versus 34 per cent for men. Meanwhile, men tend to have more senior roles, with just 26 per cent of director-led roles being held by women compared to 74 per cent by men.
The higher up the career ladder a woman makes it, the pay gap widens further, the survey suggested. In director-level positions, men earn an average £175,673 while women with the same titles earn 19 per cent less at £141,529. The CMI said that this discrepancy was partly driven by a gulf in bonus payments with the average bonus for a male chief executive coming in at £89,230, 83 per cent more than the average bonus for female bosses.
“Too many businesses are like ‘glass pyramids’ with women holding the majority of lower-paid junior roles and far fewer reaching the top,” said Ann Francke, the CMI chief executive. “We now see those extra perks of senior management roles are creating a gender pay gap wider than previously understood.”
