U.K.: Gender Pay Gap Reporting Indicates Little Has Changed

The annual deadline for U.K. businesses to report their gender pay gap is approaching and results so far show few signs that progress has been made yet. Over half of the 11,000 employers required to submit their data have done so, with some big names saying that the imbalance between what their female workers earn on average and what male staff do has actually got bigger.

Companies have until midnight April 4 to publish their 2018 figures, while the deadline for public sector bodies passed on March 31. It’s the second year that organizations with at least 250 employees in Britain have been required to provide details of any difference between the salary and bonus of all male employees and all female employees on a mean and median hourly basis, the proportion of each gender receiving a bonus and the proportion of men and women in each pay quartile.

At its debut last year, the new reporting system unleashed a wave of embarrassing information, highlighting that women are often under-represented in higher-paying roles and prompting pledges from many leading firms to improve the situation. Even so, they point out that meaningful change takes time and that little can be concluded from just two years of data.