Business

Gender pay gap: Women work nearly two hours a day for free

Royal Mail's Moya Greene is one of just five female chief executives in the FTSE 100 and was once described as the worst paid boss in the index
Royal Mail
Clare Hutchison
25 August 2015

Women are working one hour and 40 minutes for free due to a gender pay gap that sees them earn an average of £8,542 less than their male counterparts, new research has revealed.

Women earn an average of £30,612, compared with the £39,136 paid to men in equivalent roles, according to a survey of 72,000 managers by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and salary specialist XpertHR.

That puts the gender pay gap at 22%, a modest improvement on the previous year's 23%, but a signal that some employers remain unwilling to solve the problems.

XpertHR's Mark Crail said: "Many employers still prefer not to know just how bad it is in their organisation rather than getting to grips with the data and doing something about it. HR and reward specialists in larger companies have a special responsibility to get this firmly on to the senior management agenda and to develop the plans needed to close the gap."

At director levels, the disparity is even more pronounced with a £14,943 difference.

Women lose out on bonuses as well, the data shows, with men receiving average payouts of more than double the size of their female colleagues.

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It also worsens with age, with the gap at 20% for women aged 36-45 amd 35% for those aged 46-60.

Heather Jackson, founder of An Inspirational Journey, an organisation that focuses on achieving equal gender representation in business, said the figures show women have to be confident in negotiating a salary that reflects what they are worth.

"This is a wake-up call for women to get paid what they believe they are worth and it’s a wake-up call to organisations too, if they want the best talented women to work for them, they will need to pay accordingly," she said.

"This isn’t a moral issue, this is a business issue," she added.

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