Gender pay gap widens in UK at Tesco, BA, Boots, Next and Barclays

The gender pay gap at some of Britain’s highest-profile employers has widened over the past year
PA Wire/PA Images

The gender pay gap at some of Britain’s highest-profile employers, including Barclays, British Airways and Tesco, has widened over the past year, new figures reveal today.

Businesses and public sector bodies employing more than 250 people had until midnight last night to submit the latest data on the gap between pay rates. Overall the difference in median hourly rates has narrowed slightly from 9.7 per cent in 2018 to 9.6 per cent this year.

However, the submissions show that many of the biggest names in British commerce, with hundreds of thousands of staff between them, are struggling to close the pay gap.

At Barclays Bank UK it widened from 14.2 per cent to 14.9 per cent, while at rival high street lender HSBC the gap went up from 29 to 30 per cent.

Boots Management Services, which hires staff for the pharmacy chain, reported a rise from five per cent to 5.4 per cent and at Next Retail it was up from 1.7 per cent to 2.3 per cent. The gap at Tesco Stores also widened slightly from 8.4 to 8.5 per cent

British Airways saw a much bigger rise in the gap from 10 to 13 per cent and at Jaguar Land Rover it went up from 3.8 per cent to five per cent.

The median pay gap is calculated by comparing the difference in pay between the middle-ranking woman and middle-ranking man in the same company. Some of the biggest discrepancies were in the tech sector with the UK arms of Civica, Huawei and Siemens all paying women about 40 per cent less than men in 2018-19.

London-based systems and outsourcing company Civica, which runs the Automatic Number Plate Recognition service for UK police forces, had a median pay gap of 41.2 per cent, a widening from the previous figure of 35.

The UK arm of Chinese-owned telecoms giant Huawei Technologies had a gap of 40.3 per cent in 2018-19, up from 28.2 per cent last year.

The property sector was one of the worst offenders with the gap widening at 10 of the UK’s largest 18 property firms, according to analysis by magazine Property Week.

Some major public-sector employers also revealed a growing pay gap, including HM Revenue and Customs, where it went up from 12.5 per cent to 12.8 per cent.

Overall slightly less than half the UK’s biggest employers have succeeded in narrowing their gender pay gap. At 45 per cent the discrepancy in pay increased in favour of men, while at a further seven per cent there was no change. Seventy-eight per cent of companies had a pay gap in favour of men, 14 per cent favoured women and the rest reported no difference.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in