Women in the UK were paid just 90p for every £1 earned by a man, the latest government gender pay gap figures have revealed.
One of the biggest names reporting an especially yawning gender gap was easyJet, where women’s median wage stood at just 36p for every £1 earned by men last year.
Other companies admitting that median male earnings were at least double those of female employees include HSBC Bank – along with several academy trusts.
‘Little has changed’
An easyJet spokesperson told The Guardian that its “gender pay submission does not represent a complete picture because the data in April 2021 included pilots, while the majority of our predominantly female UK cabin crew community remained on furlough”.
Analysis by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggested that construction was the sector with the largest gender median pay gap – with female employees receiving just 76p for every £1 earned by a man.
The gap is also significant in the financial and insurance sector – 88p to the pound – while women working in information and communication were paid 83p for every pound earned by a man.
The slimmest gaps were found in human health and social work activities (98p for every £1 earned by a man); arts, entertainment and recreation (96p) and transportation and storage (95p).
Falling reporting numbers
Charles Cotton, senior policy adviser for reward and recognition with the CIPD, told The Guardian that “very little has changed with it comes to addressing the gender pay gap in Britain”.
He added: “Employers shouldn’t just report the numbers; instead they need to understand the reason for any gap and be transparent about how they plan to tackle it.”
All companies with more than 250 employees are required to file a gender pay gap report, but the number of organisations reporting has fallen compared with before the pandemic – from about 9,000 to 8,200 in the latest reporting period.
The easyJet spokesperson said: “We have always been clear that our gender pay gap is not a result of unequal pay but of gender balance in our pilot community, which is predominantly male.
“This is a known, industry-wide challenge that will take many years to reverse and one which we have been actively trying to tackle for a number of years.”
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