Gender Pay Gap

Pay Gap Case Study #7 – Does the Department for Work & Pensions have a Gender Pay Gap?

March 5, 2023 By Nigel Marriott

The Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) says for every £1 paid to the median man in March 2022, the median woman was also paid £1. In other words, their 2022 median gender pay gap using hourly pay was 0%. However, their Gender Swap Number per 1,000 employees for this date was +26 which immediately raises the question “Have the DWP made an error in their calculations like Cleveland Police did in 2017?” This was my first reaction which seems remarkable for an employer with 91,006 full pay relevant employees on a public sector pay scale and the largest pool of statisticians of any government department.

Pay Gaps #28 – Does the NHS Harm Gender Equality?

February 17, 2023 By Nigel Marriott

“We’re committed to Gender Equality!”

As we approach International Women’s Day next month, expect to see more and more employers saying something like this in their PR. It’s an easy statement to make but what does Gender Equality mean to them and you? To encourage employers to be clearer on what this means for them, I want to explore 6 possible definitions. Along the way, I show some definitions of gender equality in the UK are out of reach unless half a million women working for the NHS (National Health Service) are replaced by men.

Pay Gap Case Study #6 – How Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister

November 11, 2022 By Nigel Marriott

Rishi Sunak is the UK’s first Prime Minister from a non-white ethnic minority. Did this happen by accident or were the Tories working towards this day over the last 20 years?

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald by an Australian journalist Latika Burke argues it was the latter. This is well worth reading because it goes into some depth about what the Conservatives did to get to this position. When I combine this article with what I have said before about closing pay and representation gaps, I consider the Conservative party to be a valuable case study for any employer who wishes to close their gaps.

Pay Gaps #26 – Why are female dominated public sector gender pay gaps so large?

May 26, 2022 By Nigel Marriott

… & why are gender pay gaps so small at male dominated private sector employers?

When I asked people recently who on average had the larger gender pay gap, the results were –

62% said female dominated (>80% employees are women) public sector (snapshot date 31st March) employers. There were 420 such employers in April 2021 who reported their UK gender pay gap.
38% said male dominated (>80% employees are men) private sector (snapshot date 5th April) employers. There were 1584 such employers in April 2021 who reported their UK gender pay gap.

The majority are correct. In April 2021, for every £1 paid to the average man, the average woman was paid 90p at the average male dominated private sector employer and 77p at the average female dominated public sector employer. For context, the average woman at the average employer in the finance sector (who are often in the news for having large pay gaps) is paid 75p.

Pay Gap Trends #5 – Has pay gap reporting narrowed the gender pay gap?

May 13, 2022 By Nigel Marriott

Disinterested employers were 20% less likely than engaged employers to have narrowed their UK gender pay gap between 2017 & 2021 . I draw this conclusion from a statistical model using ~6,000 employers which removed the effect of confounders such as size, sector, furlough, gender ratio, etc. Once accounted for, I found 61% of those reporting their pay gap for 2019 had narrowed their pay gap by 2021 compared to 55% of those not reporting 2019 data.

Pay Gap Data #5 – Where can I find gender pay gap data for 2021?

May 1, 2022 By Nigel Marriott

This post was updated on 1st May 2022 with the latest data

The government requires all organisations employing 250 or more employees to submit gender pay gap data. All data is available to the public and can be found on the government’s gender pay gap website. I have downloaded this data and created a spreadsheet tool to present the data in a more user-friendly and visual format.

Pay Gap Data #4 – Where can I find gender pay gap data for 2020?

October 10, 2021 By Nigel Marriott

This post was updated on 10th October 2021 with the latest data

Pay Gap Trends #4 – Did the UK gender pay gap narrow in 2020?

September 5, 2021 By Nigel Marriott

This article was last updated using data submitted as of 4th September 2021.

In February 2021, the EHRC confirmed that all employers with a headcount of 250 employees or more would have to submit their gender pay gaps based on the 2020 snapshot date. Due to the lateness of this confirmation, they also stated that no enforcement action would be taken prior to the end of September 2021. As result, fewer employers than expected have reported 2020 data so far so I have used two methods of imputation to estimate that the median gender pay gap among these employers narrowed by 0.2 to 0.3 pence in the pound in 2020.

Pay Gaps #22 – My 7 + 5 recommendations for amending UK pay gap legislation

June 30, 2021 By Nigel Marriott

When gender pay gap reporting was introduced by the government for the 2017 snapshot date for all employers with a headcount of 250 or more, it was made clear they would evaluate how the legislation had worked after 5 years. We are now in the 5th year of pay gap reporting and I would like to submit to the government 7 recommendations to improve the way employers’ data is reported and 5 recommendations to improve the data used in the calculations and to reduce various distortions.

Pay Gap Case Study #5 – Why Ryanair’s pay gap report is my favourite

May 28, 2021 By Nigel Marriott

Ryanair has the largest (verified) gender pay gap of any employer in the UK, they didn’t bother to report their 2019 pay gap, they are leaving their 2020 pay gap reporting to the last minute, it’s pay gap narrative is only 1 page, they incorrectly use pie charts to represent the pay gap and they have a dodgy bar chart the Liberal Democrats would be proud of! But apart from all that, Ryanair’s gender pay gap report is a shining example that all other employers could learn from. Out of the hundred plus pay gap narratives I have read so far, Ryanair’s is my favourite.