Gender pay gap revealed: how the UK’s biggest employers compare

Since 2017, organ­i­sa­tions that employ more than 250 peo­ple have been required to pub­lish the dif­fer­ence in pay between men and women. But despite the pres­sure to close gap, the major­i­ty of the UK’s biggest employ­ers still pay men more than women.

Some still have gen­der pay gaps in excess of 10%, with the aver­age mean dif­fer­ence in hourly pay across all busi­ness­es that have report­ed at 13.6%. This means that, on aver­age, women are earn­ing 86.4p for every £1 earned by men.

Foot­ball clubs con­tin­ue to have some of the high­est gen­der pay gaps, most­ly due to the high lev­els of remu­ner­a­tion paid to pro­fes­sion­al male play­ers. The dif­fer­ence in mean hourly pay between men and women at Sheffield Unit­ed Foot­ball Club, for exam­ple, is 87.9%.

The rest of the pri­vate sec­tor has post­ed mixed results in their ongo­ing efforts to achieve gen­der par­i­ty between men and women. Here we take a more detailed look at how some of the UK’s biggest employ­ers have per­formed.

BBC gender pay gap

The dif­fer­ence in aver­age pay between men and women at the BBC has been steadi­ly decreas­ing since report­ing was first man­dat­ed in 2017.

From an ini­tial gen­der pay gap of 10.7%, the pub­lic broad­cast­er now has a 5% dif­fer­ence in the mean hourly pay of men and women. The medi­an pay gap has fol­lowed the same tra­jec­to­ry, mean­ing that on aver­age women are paid 5p less for every £1 that men earn at the organ­i­sa­tion.

In terms of bonus pay­ments, women and men were reward­ed the same amount.

The BBC also vol­un­tar­i­ly pub­lish­es its pay gaps for black, Asian and minor­i­ty eth­nic staff, dis­abled staff, LGBTQ+ staff and those work­ing part time. In its ongo­ing efforts to ensure equal­i­ty across the organ­i­sa­tion, the BBC has also out­lined its ambi­tions to have a 50:20:12 split — a gen­der-bal­anced organ­i­sa­tion, with at least 20% Black, Asian and eth­nic minor­i­ty staff and at least 12% dis­abled staff.

HSBC Bank gender pay gap

The British multi­na­tion­al bank employs around 220,000 peo­ple glob­al­ly but has con­sis­tent­ly strug­gled to close its gen­der pay gap.

Despite an improve­ment of four per­cent­age points on the pre­vi­ous year, HSBC post­ed a mean hourly pay gap of more than 50% for the fifth year run­ning.

One of the key rea­sons for this is the much larg­er per­cent­age of men that occu­py high-paid posi­tions at the com­pa­ny. Some 88% of the peo­ple in the upper pay quar­tile are male.

This has been a con­sis­tent prob­lem for the bank­ing sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar, with Lloyds Bank post­ing a mean hourly pay gap of 32.6% and Bar­clays record­ing a 24.1% dif­fer­ence in pay.

Jaguar Land Rover gender pay gap

Although Jaguar Land Rover’s pay gap was high­er in 2021/22, when com­pared the the pre­vi­ous year, it still remains rel­a­tive­ly low at 3.6%.

When com­par­ing the medi­an hourly pay of men and women, women were only paid 2p less than men at the car man­u­fac­tur­er.

The num­ber of men that the com­pa­ny employs far out­weighs the num­ber of women across all pay quar­ters. How­ev­er, because the split is rel­a­tive­ly even across those on the low­est and high­est pay (14.2% of peo­ple in the upper pay quar­tile and 16.6% of peo­ple in the low­est pay quar­tile are women), the over­all gen­der pay gap remains small.

Tesco Stores gender pay gap

In its lat­est gen­der pay report, Tesco CEO Jason Tar­ry acknowl­edges that, as one of the largest employ­ers in the UK, the com­pa­ny has to rep­re­sent the the com­mu­ni­ties it serves.

The super­mar­ket’s mean hourly pay gap fell from 9.7% to 8.8%. Tar­ry says: “These fig­ures con­tin­ue to move in the right direc­tion and are our low­est num­bers since we start­ed report­ing. We are mak­ing progress, but we still have more to do.”

Some of the rea­sons giv­en for this dif­fer­ence in pay include the high­er pro­por­tion of men tak­ing shifts at times that pay pre­mi­ums, such as nights and bank hol­i­days, and the high­er num­ber of men that hold senior roles at the com­pa­ny.

This was reflect­ed in Tesco’s bonus pay gap for 2021, where women earned an aver­age of 74p for every £1 that men were paid in bonus­es.

WPP 2005 gender pay gap

WPP 2005, the par­ent com­pa­ny of the adver­tis­ing com­pa­ny WPP, which was found­ed by Sir Mar­tin Sor­rell, post­ed a gen­der pay gap of 23.8%. This was less than half the com­pa­ny’s pre­vi­ous mean hourly pay gap of 48.6%.

When look­ing at medi­an hourly pay fig­ures, women earned 76p for every £1 made by men.

Com­ment­ing on the lat­est pay gap fig­ures, WPP chief peo­ple offi­cer Jen­nifer Rem­ling says: “Invest­ing in a cul­ture where diver­si­ty thrives and every­one has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do their best work pow­ers our cre­ativ­i­ty and growth as a busi­ness. While we have seen a reduc­tion in our UK gen­der pay gap across WPP, we need to con­tin­ue to invest in the devel­op­ment of women at all lev­els to help them achieve their full poten­tial.”

One of the main rea­sons for the gen­der pay gap at WPP in 2021/22 was the lack of female rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the top of the busi­ness. Women made up only 34% of peo­ple in the com­pa­ny’s high­est pay quar­tile.

In an attempt to address this, WPP is com­mit­ting to improve its efforts to attract and pro­mote more women into senior roles. As part of its plans, it hopes to devel­op its career coach­ing pro­gramme, enrol more women into its glob­al pro­grammes and has part­nered with Brix­ton Fin­ish­ing School to pro­vide free train­ing for women over the age of 45 who want to enter the adver­tis­ing indus­try.

Amazon UK Services gender pay gap

Ama­zon UK Ser­vices looks after the ecom­merce side of the tech giant’s busi­ness oper­a­tions. In 2021/22 it’s mean gen­der pay gap tipped in the favour of women for the first time.

Since hov­er­ing around the 1% mark since 2018, the com­pa­ny’s lat­est pay gap was ‑0.5%. Over­all, the medi­an hourly pay and bonus pay­ments were equal for men and women.

Tak­ing into account Ama­zon’s over­all per­for­mance across all its UK oper­a­tions, its mean gen­der pay gap is 6.3%.

An Ama­zon spokesper­son says: “At Ama­zon we are com­mit­ted to build­ing a diverse, mer­it-based organ­i­sa­tion which is reflect­ed in our diver­si­ty ini­tia­tives and gen­der pay gap per­for­mance. We con­tin­u­al­ly work to improve our gen­der diver­si­ty ini­tia­tives to active­ly recruit and help advance more women into senior and tech­nol­o­gy-focused roles as we grow our busi­ness here in the UK.”

Facebook UK gender pay gap

Face­book UK, which is respon­si­ble for the UK oper­a­tions of the recent­ly rebrand­ed Meta, post­ed a mean gen­der pay gap of 2.1% for the 2021/22 report­ing year.

Although its medi­an pay gap was 8.4%, the social media com­pa­ny claims to have a pay par­i­ty pol­i­cy for peo­ple work­ing in the same roles.

The rea­son for the dis­par­i­ty in aver­age pay for men and women at the com­pa­ny was because of the num­ber of men work­ing in senior tech­ni­cal roles, where rates of com­pen­sa­tion are usu­al­ly high­er.

Meta claims that, since its first gen­der pay gap report in 2017, the pro­por­tion of women in lead­er­ship and tech­ni­cal roles has increased from 29% to 32%.

In order to fur­ther improve this num­ber, Meta’s vice-pres­i­dent of inter­na­tion­al HR Eliz­a­beth Run­ham says the com­pa­ny is ensur­ing its hir­ing poli­cies are more diverse and is mak­ing its work­place more inclu­sive. This has includ­ed manda­to­ry diver­si­ty and inclu­sion train­ing for man­agers.

Greggs gender pay gap

Last year, Greg­gs chief exec­u­tive Roger White­side said he was con­fi­dent that the gen­der pay gap at the busi­ness was not due to men and women being paid dif­fer­ent­ly to do the same jobs but was rather the result of the struc­ture of the work­force. And it appears that the same fac­tors have con­tributed to its gen­der pay gap this year.

The pop­u­lar bak­ery chain’s mean gen­der pay gap increased year on year, from 12.5% to 15.2%.

Although the per­cent­age of women in the com­pa­ny’s high­est pay brack­et is rough­ly the same as men (51%), the num­ber of women in front line oper­a­tions (the low­est quar­tile for hourly pay) exceeds men by three to one.

The com­pa­ny had strug­gled as a result of the Covid pan­dem­ic, post­ing its first full-year loss in 2020. How­ev­er, it returned to prof­itable growth this year and as a result was able to share £16.6m with staff through its col­league prof­it shar­ing scheme.

Google UK gender pay gap

The gen­der pay gap closed slight­ly at Google, shrink­ing from 17% to 15% between 2020 and 2021. The medi­an hourly pay gap at the com­pa­ny for the 2021/22 report­ing year was also 15%, mean­ing that women are paid 15p less than men for every £1 they earn.

Once again, the biggest bar­ri­er to clos­ing the gen­der pay gap at the com­pa­ny comes from the struc­ture of the busi­ness and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of men in the high­est paid posi­tions.

Ronan Har­ris, MD of Google UK and Ire­land, says: “We are mak­ing progress in nar­row­ing our gen­der pay gap, but there’s much more to do to increase rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in senior lead­er­ship posi­tions and engi­neer­ing roles. We’ll keep work­ing with our col­leagues and the wider indus­try to dri­ve progress in diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion and cre­ate a cul­ture of belong­ing for all our col­leagues.”

The bonus pay gap also reflect­ed this, with women earn­ing 67p in bonus pay for every pound made by men.

British Airways gender pay gap

Flag car­ri­er air­line British Air­ways has strug­gled to close its gen­der pay gap, which has increased from 35% in 2017/18 to 45.5% in this year’s dis­clo­sure.

This is, how­ev­er, an improve­ment on the pre­vi­ous year, when on aver­age women were paid less than half what men made.

While the split between men and women in the low­est-paid posi­tions is even­ly split, the upper hourly pay quar­tile is 81.5% men.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, women at the air­line received more in bonus pay than men, on aver­age. Women earned £1.03 for every pound that men were paid when com­par­ing medi­an bonus pay­outs.

Marks and Spencer gender pay gap

The mean gen­der pay gap at Marks and Spencer has con­sis­tent­ly been around 12% since report­ing began in 2017. The lat­est report shows a pay dif­fer­ence of 12.5%.

When look­ing at the medi­an fig­ure, men and women earn rough­ly the same amount per hour.

A spokesper­son from the retail­er says: “We are firm­ly com­mit­ted to dri­ving equal oppor­tu­ni­ties and reward­ing all our col­leagues fair­ly for the work they do at M&S.”

McDonald’s Restaurants gender pay gap

Over in the US, McDon­ald’s claims to be on track to close its gen­der pay gap this year. Cur­rent­ly women there earn 82 cents for every $1 earned by men.

In the UK, the com­pa­ny has already achieved pay par­i­ty, mak­ing it the only com­pa­ny on this list with a medi­an hourly pay gap of zero.

Women who work under the gold­en arch­es also earned £1.12 for every pound earned by men when com­par­ing medi­an bonus pay for 2021/22.

Apple UK gender pay gap

Apple has one of the high­est gen­der pay gaps of any Sil­i­con Val­ley tech giant oper­at­ing in the UK, although the com­pa­ny has man­aged to close its gen­der pay gap by 10 per­cent­age points since 2017, reduc­ing it from 26% to 16%.

Like many oth­er tech com­pa­nies, it has a work­force that is skewed male, espe­cial­ly in the high­est paid posi­tions.

The bonus pay gap at Apple shows a sim­i­lar sto­ry, with women earn­ing 58p for every pound men made.

In this arti­cle we use both the mean and the medi­an gen­der pay gap. The mean is cal­cu­lat­ed by adding up the pay of all male or female employ­ees and then divid­ing this num­ber by the total num­ber of males or females. The medi­an is the cen­tral num­ber of a dataset.

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