United Kingdom: large gender pay gap persists, despite reporting obligations

The second year of obligatory gender pay gap reporting, applicable to companies with at least 250 employees, has illustrated a worrying lack of movement by companies. Despite the introduction of the gender pay reporting requirement (see article n°9966), the figures published – up to the deadline on 5 April – indicate that 78% of companies still pay their female staff less than their male counterparts. Meanwhile the median difference between the pay received by male and female workers reduced by only 0.1 percentage points year on year, to 9.6% for 2018 compared to 9.7% in 2017 (see article n°10630). The figures also show that the gender gap has either remained the same or increased in more than half of companies, with large firms such as the banks HSBC and Barclays, supermarket chain Tesco, and airline British Airways disclosing worse figures than in last year’s edition.