Gender pay gap data to be published by British companies

British companies will have to publish various figures on their gender pay gap within a year after a new law came into force on Thursday.

Companies with 250 employees or more will need to publish the disparity in pay between genders in a bid to tackle the growing inequality between the sexes and motivate companies to narrow the gap, with the government arguing this could add £150bn to gross domestic product by 2025.

The gender pay gap currently stands at 18.1% for all workers, or 9.4% for full-time employees.

Companies will start recording the the proportion of male and female employees in different pay bands, the gap in bonuses and how many men and women receive a bonus to be put on a central government database by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

The gender pay gap is different to equal pay - the difference in average earnings between men and women - which has been legal since 1970.

Private business or charities will publish a snapshot of the numbers at 5 April, or 31 March for the public sector by April 2018.

The new legislation affects 9,000 companies who employ over 15m people in Britain, while some companies such as Virgin Money and Deloitte already publish their figures.

Verity O'Keefe, senior employment and skills policy adviser at EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, said: “The transparency this data will drive is important, but it must also be recognised that the simple snapshot it will provide may often hide a more complex picture.

“It is vital that we make people aware that a gender pay gap in an organisation does not automatically mean there is an equal pay problem – the latter being illegal.

She said that manufacturers would likely have higher than average figures as “just a handful of engineering apprentices and graduates are female and far too few young girls are studying” STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects.

“Until we are able to move the dial on female recruitment in our industry we are unlikely to see much movement on closing the gender pay gap.”