Who has the biggest and smallest gender pay gap?

Last year, the UK’s average gender pay gap was 18.4%. But for individual companies, the new pay gap figures show it can be much more. Lingerie retailer Boux Avenue’s is a staggering 75.7%, with men making up 91% of the top 25% of earners. Women working at the company earn just 24p for every £1 men earn (blimey, where’s my application form..?!) The retailer Debenhams, by way of contrast, has a 0.3% gender pay gap.

Ryanair has a gender pay gap of almost 72%, with women making up just 3% of the top 25% of earners. Easyjet’s is better, but not brilliant by any means, at 54%, while British Airways reported a pay gap of 10%, with women making up over a third of the company’s top earners.

In financial services, pay gaps vary in banking from over 40% (Sainsbury’s Bank and Lloyds make this list) to just 2% (M&S Bank).

In asset management, a gender pay gap of 25% to 30% isn’t unusual, and the highest I’ve found so far is over 47%. But, in a sector that’s bonus-driven, the bonus gap is even more revealing. At Rathbone, for example, women get – on average – a bonus of just 15p for every £1 that men get. At Legal & General Investment Management (a household name that manages almost £1 trillion of assets), the bonus gap is 55%.

In comparison, Yellow Dot (a company that operates day nurseries) pays women a staggering 80% more than men, on average. But with most companies the gap is much lower. Unilever pays women more than men – just. Its gender pay gap is 1.3% (although women get 44% less in bonuses).

Travel insurance company Insure & Go pays women 2.6% more than men and, unusually, most of its top earners are women – they make up over 60% of the top quartile of pay levels. Women lose out on bonuses, but by relatively little (less than 7%).

The Department for Work and Pensions – which is often in the headlines for negative stories – pays women and men the same hourly rate and the same bonuses.

What next?

As well as publishing the data, companies have had to explain why they have a gender pay gap and what they’re going to do about it. Too many gender pay gap reports I’ve read say that the gap exists because there are more men in senior roles. But that’s not the reason, that’s the consequence of recruitment policies, working practices, leadership and so on. The differences in gender pay gaps from employers in the same sector show that it’s more of a company issue, than a sector one.

The real work starts now in terms of keeping up the pressure on companies to do something meaningful about their gender pay gaps. That could mean voting with your feet, and not buying from companies that have a high gender pay gap. Independent researchers Opinium conducted some research for my website, SavvyWoman, and found that over half of women would consider switching bank if theirs had a high gender pay gap. If a big gender pay gap affects a company’s reputation, revenues and profits, they will have to take notice.

The gender pay gap 2018: what does it mean for women?