United Kingdom threatens action against 1500 firms over silence on gender pay gap

Rockstar North, the developers of the Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt series based in Scotland, UK have recently released a report, revealing how bad the gender pay gap is within the company. For example, the majority of the overall headcount at Karen Millen are women, with most of these employees occupied in lower-paid stylist roles across the UK.

The report also showed the palace employs more men than women in the highest paid roles.

In a statement published alongside the data, Condé Nast attributed its salary skew to its longstanding and male-dominated senior leadership team.

Bonus eligibility at the company is linked to job level, resulting in women taking home bonuses worth 31.5pc less than men’s on average. Instead, the government intend to publish industry-specific league tables, highlighting the employers failing to even out differences in salary between men and women.

The Pay Gap Also Varies across Industries – The oil and gas industry has the largest controlled pay gap at 7.4 percent, followed by transportation and warehousing at 4.9 percent.

One odd side effect of high skill women often working part-time is that the part-time wage gap actually leans in favour of women – but the official statistics for full-time workers show on average men earn 9.1% an hour more than women, with the gap starting very small for younger workers and growing as they age.

The RSC said that although their figures were “better than the national average, we want them to be better”. The report caused an outcry that has led to parliamentary hearings. We pay employees equally for the same roles, regardless of their gender.

That remains to be seen.

She said: “While we’ve welcomed the new pay transparency measures as an important first step in addressing the systemic inequality women face at work, the fundamental weakness is that employers aren’t required to take action that will close their pay gap”. This also means evolving policies and work culture to balance the burden between the genders of caring for children and other family members to alleviate the current career and pay impact for women.

ITN chief executive John Hardie has said he will “not receive a penny” in bonus pay unless he hits new targets on “strict” gender and diversity objectives alongside existing financial ones.

As UK businesses scrambled to submit their gender pay gap figures to the government by midnight last night, three of the country’s biggest auction houses have revealed the extent of the divide. Surely within the NHS, our schools – and in our borough councils – more should be done to ensure women are encouraged to go for the top positions?

The government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission said they would not comment on the number of companies and public-sector bodies that were required to report their figures.