Guardian's gender pay gap falls to 8.4%

Guardian News & Media’s gender pay gap has fallen to 8.4% – calculated by median hourly pay – from 12.1% a year ago, according to new company figures.

The median hourly pay for a woman in an editorial role at the Guardian’s parent company was 6.4% less than that for a man, an improvement on an 8.8% gap a year ago on a median basis, which takes the mid-point when all wage rates are lined up from the biggest to smallest, thus reducing the effect of one-off outliers. The gap was 19.1% for non-editorial staff, up from 18.2% last year.

The overall GNM pay gap is similar to a 7.6% median gap at the BBC published last week and compares with an 18.4% gap at the Financial Times for 2018. The GNM data was based on a snapshot of company pay taken on 5 April this year.

On a mean basis – which takes the total paid to each gender and divides it by the number of employees of that gender – the GNM pay gap is 11.7%, up from 11.3% last year, compared with 8.4% at the BBC and 22% at the FT.

GNM is publishing the data under the government’s compulsory gender pay gap initiative, which was introduced last year and requires all private and public sector organisations and charities with more than 250 employees to submit annual figures. Organisations have until April next year to report their latest data.

The company said its wider non-editorial gap reflected a small number of changes in senior roles. In an email to staff, GNM’s HR director, Suzy Black, said of the wider gap: “We are disappointed that this is the case – and it makes our plan to tackle the pay gap and improve women’s representation across the company all the more important.”

The company has introduced measures including a mentoring scheme for female employees, training managers in unconscious bias and setting departmental objectives to improve women’s representation and progression. GNM is aiming to achieve a 50:50 gender balance at the head of the organisation within five years. At present 65% of its top-paid employees are men and 61% of its lowest paid are women, a slightly higher proportion than last year.

Among those who received a bonus, there was no gap on a median basis, but women received 34.2% less than men on a mean basis whereas last year women received 1% more. The company said this was partly the result of the departure of a number of male staff who received relatively small bonuses with the closure of the group’s print works as well as sales commissions received by senior male staff in commercial divisions.

The company said that its 2018 data indicated a mixed picture. “There are some areas of good progress, but others in which we have more to do,” a spokesperson said. “We have put in place a number of initiatives to develop, promote and recruit women at all levels, and we expect to see improvements as these initiatives take effect.”

The gender pay gap refers to the difference between what men and women working for an organisation earn regardless of their roles, rather than men and women in the same role.