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Gender pay gap

Fiona Cuming Editor's message: Equal pay legislation has been around since the 1970s, giving men and women the right to claim equal pay where they perform "equal work". The gender pay gap, however, covers the difference in the average earnings of men and women, regardless of their role or seniority. There are a variety of factors behind it, including the impact on women's career progression of taking time out of the labour market to have children, and career choices, with typical “male” subjects such as IT and science often leading to higher-paid roles.

To address the issue, the Government introduced a requirement for all large organisations to publish their gender pay gap. This involves producing six key metrics, including the difference in the mean and median pay and bonus pay of men and women, along with the proportion of men and women in each of four quartile pay bands.

The deadline for employers to report their gender pay gaps passed at midnight on 30 March for those in the public sector, and at midnight on 4 April for those in the private and voluntary sectors. At that point, 10,016 organisations had uploaded their data to the government gender pay gap reporting website to appear in a publicly available league table.

Although some organisations are expected to report their data later than the legal deadline, we have conducted a short analysis of the data published by 5 April.

Fiona Cuming, employment law editor

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HR and legal information and guidance relating to the gender pay gap.

Gender pay gap: key resources

Gender pay gap reporting service

  • The XpertHR Gender pay gap reporting service provides a bespoke report to participating organisations setting out the six key metrics they must publish to comply with the gender pay gap Regulations.
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