Companies still to report as gender pay gap reporting deadline looms

Private and voluntary sector companies with more than 250 employees have until midnight tonight to submit details of their gender pay gap.

At 8am this morning, around 8,900 companies had published theirs to the Government’s gender pay gap portal, of an estimated total of 9,000 eligible organisations.

Given a significant proportion of those that have already reported are public sector employers, who had to report by 30 March, there are potentially still a large number of private sector organisations to report today.

Of those that have already published data, 78% pay men more than women, while 13% pay women more. Only 8% said they had no median gender pay gap at all.

A number of household name employers, including Unilever and BT, pay women on average more than men. At Unilever, women’s median hourly rate is 1.3% higher than men’s. According to BT’s main public company listing, women are paid 2.3% more in terms of median hourly rate.

In an article for The Telegraph this morning, Prime Minister Theresa May said that the figures would make uncomfortable reading for many, calling the gender pay gap a “burning injustice”.

She added: “We will have established a baseline from which to hold [businesses] to account in the future.

“Shareholders and customers will expect to see improvements, and will be able to hold organisations to account if they fail to achieve them.”

Earlier this week, it was revealed that nine in 10 public sector organisations paid men more than women in 2017. Meanwhile a cross-party group of women in parliament launched the #PayMeToo campaign, aiming to offer women advice on how to help their employer tackle their gender pay gap.