In the UK, female managers are working for free for 57 days of the year, due to the pay discrepancies between men and women.
According to a new survey, women professionals are earning 22% less than their male counterpart for the same roles. This means that women are in effect working for free for 100 minutes a day.
In the survey carried out by the Chartered Management Institute and the pay analysts XpertHR, the gender pay gap among professionals is now on average, £8,500 – although this is slightly down on last year’s gap of £9,000. The study also found that this gap widens to £15,000 for senior roles.
The gender pay gap also widens depending on a woman’s age – for those aged 26 to 35, it is 6% compared to 38% for those over 60. CMI and XpertHR also found that less than a quarter of jobs on company boards are given to women.
Mark Crail, content director of XpertHR, said, “An entire generation has now worked its way through from school leaver to retirement since the first equal pay legislation came into effect in 1970, yet gender pay gap persists. Many employers still prefer not to know just how bad it is in their organisation rather than getting to grips with the data and doing something about it.”
Ann Francke from CMI said, “Working for free two hours a day is unacceptable. While some progress is being made, it’s clear from our research that Lord Davies is right to target the executive pipeline.”
The gender pay gap has been gathering attention in recent months. It was announced that FTSE 100 companies had reached their target of getting 25% of women in boardrooms.
David Cameron has also recently announced that the government will force companies to reveal their pay discrepancies between men and women, as a voluntary scheme failed. Deloitte, PwC and Tesco have all voluntarily revealed their gender pay gap, but other big companies are yet to do so.
The Davies Review is also set to establish pay targets for female FTSE 100 executives. It is expected that the group will call for firms to employ women into 25% of their top earning roles.
