New research has found that the gender pay gap for the UK’s 3.3 million managers is £3000 higher than was previously thought.
Using the definition of pay in the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 which came into force in April 2017, the Chartered Management Institute and XpertHR found that the gender pay gap between male and female managers was 26.8 per cent this year, compared to 23.1 per cent last year.
On average, male managers are out-earning female peers by £11,606 a year (including salary and bonuses, as well as perks such as car allowance and commission) while last year the gap was £8,964. Even without applying the new calculations, the data for this year showed that this basic salary gap was slightly worse at £9,326.
Men are not just more likely to occupy senior positions compared to women (74 per cent compared to 26 per cent), but they are also paid more than women who manage to progress to senior roles. At director-level positions, men earn an average of £175,673 with women on £141,529. This is exacerbated by bonus payments, with average bonuses for a male CEO standing at £89,230 compared to £14,945 for a woman – a gap of 83 per cent.
Under the government’s new reporting regulations, large employers with more than 250 employees must now publicly disclose the size of their gender pay gap. To date, just 72 out of the 7,850 UK companies to which the new law applies have done so.
This is the first time that pay gap data, compiled by XpertHR, has been published taking into account the new rules. This is based on analysis of salary data of 118,385 managers from 423 organisations over the past year.
Jo Seery of Thompsons Solicitors commented: “This research shows yet again that the glass ceiling remains firmly in place. More concrete measures are clearly necessary such as a statutory duty on businesses to explain why the gender pay gap exists and what measures they will put in place to address the gender pay gap”.
Click here to read the findings in more detail.