Gender pay gap report

Definitions

Gender Pay Gap

The Gender Pay Gap is the difference in average pay between all men and women in an organisation. It is expressed as a difference in percentage (%) between men and women. A minus figure means that the difference favours women.

Equal Pay

The gender pay gap is different from equal pay. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value. It is unlawful to pay people unequally because they are a man or a woman.

Mean Pay Gap

The mean pay gap is the difference in the arithmetic average hourly pay for women compared to men within an organisation.

Median Pay Gap

The median represents the middle point of a population. If you lined up all the women in an organisation, and all the men, in order of the hourly rate at which they are paid, the median pay gap is the difference between the hourly rate for the middle woman compared to that of the middle man.

The median is generally considered to be the better indicator of ‘average’ earnings because the mean can be skewed by fewer individuals earning more in the upper ranges. The median therefore gives a better indication of typical pay than the mean.

Hourly Gender Pay Gap

• Our mean hourly pay gap is 6.0% in favour of men, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points (pp) from 6.3% in 2023.
• Our median hourly pay gap is 5.7% in favour of men, an increase of 2.7pp from 3.0% in 2023.

Gender Bonus Gap

• In the year April 2023 to March 2024 90.1% of women were awarded a bonus, an increase of 6.2pp over the previous year.
• In the same period 85.5% of men were awarded a bonus, an increase of 6.0pp over the previous year.
• The mean bonus pay gap is minus 13.1% in favour of women, an increase of 11.2pp from minus 1.9% in 2023.
• The median bonus pay gap is minus 20.0% in favour of women, an increase of 20pp from 0.0% in 2023.

At the UK Statistics Authority, bonuses for all grades below Senior Civil Service (SCS) are awarded in fixed amounts (£50, £150, or £250). When analysing bonus pay, the mean is a better measure than the median. This is because the fixed bonus amounts create natural clusters of employees at these specific values. As a result, the median, which is the middle value, will always be one of these fixed amounts. This can lead to larger and more noticeable differences between the median bonuses for different groups (e.g. men and women), potentially the difference between £50 and £250. These differences can cause bigger swings in the median gap from year to year. On the other hand, the mean, which is the average, is not restricted to these fixed amounts and can provide a more nuanced view of the bonus distribution, leading to less dramatic changes in the gap.

Pay by Quartile

• A quartile is a statistical term that divides a data set into four equal parts, each representing a quarter of the data. Figure 2 shows average hourly pay by quartile for the UK Statistics Authority on 31^st March 2024 and shows there were a higher proportion of women (compared to men) in all quartiles.
• The upper pay quartile was mostly populated by higher paid grades, specifically the SCS, Grade 6, and Grade 7. Actions have therefore been focused on increasing representation of women in these grades. We are delighted to have made such progress, and we will continue to prioritise this in the coming year.

Figure 2: Distribution through each pay quartile