Named and shamed: The worst gender pay gap offenders

The results are finally in.

In what was no doubt a nail-biting race to the finish line for HR departments across the UK, desperately compiling their gender pay gap reports to meet the midnight deadline, 10,015 firms have successfully published their figures.

Overall, the data is as expected. About 78 per cent of companies with more than 250 employees have a mean pay gap that favours men, with a median pay gap of 9.7 per cent.

The rest of them? 8 per cent had no median pay gap at all, while 14 per cent actually had one that favoured women. These 'negative pay gap' holders included Mamas and Papas, electronic car specialists Tesla Motors and electronics firm Richer Sounds.

Read more: Facts about female equality around the world

Pats on the back go to Costa, KFC, Matalan, McDonald's, Primark and Starbucks, all of which had little to no gender pay gap.

Perhaps surprisingly, high street women’s fashion retailers Karen Millen, Phase Eight and Sweaty Betty appeared in the worst 2 per cent for paying women the lowest hourly wages.

Here are the 10 companies with the largest gender pay gap:

1. NWN Media – GAP 85.2 per cent

Turns out, the North Wales News company, which runs several local newspapers including the Chester Standard and the North Wales Chronicle, is the worst of a terrible bunch with a cavernous gender pay gap of 85.2 per cent. Just what is it about reporting on Bangor pot holes and South Stack parking proposals that is putting women off of those top jobs, we wonder?

2. Millwall Holdings PLC – GAP 80 per cent

Must try harder, parent company of Millwall FC. Women’s median pay at the football club is a staggering 99 per cent lower than that of male colleagues, while only 3 per cent of women there receive bonuses compared to 29 per cent of men.

3. GoToDoc – GAP 77 per cent

Pretty shocking for the private urgent care company that runs GP practices in north-west England. There’s no hiding from that figure.

4. Boux Avenue – GAP 75.7 per cent.

A surprising entry in at number four for Dragon’s Den star Theo Paphitis’s women’s underwear store. All of its staff in its lower three pay quartiles are female. In the top paid jobs, 91 per cent went to women. In its report, the company said the high female workforce was due to “the intimate nature of our products” and that the hourly rates of the lower paid, part time roles were “particularly appealing to female colleagues”.

5. Fusion People – GAP 73.3 per cent

The construction, finance and engineering recruitment company blamed its pay gap on history “because of the nature of the work”. Most jobs taken by women were clerical and therefore paid at a lower hourly rate, they said in their report.

6. Aaron Services – GAP 73 per cent

This East Anglia and Midlands heating contractor is way off the mark. Is contracting heating another traditionally “male” industry? It’s leaving us cold, that’s for sure.

7. Malling Health – GAP 73 per cent

Another group of GP surgeries in the top 10 worst offenders list. This one is run by IMH Group, which operates numerous primary care sites across the UK. Given that, according to the General Medical Council, the men and women entering the medical profession of GPs and specialist doctors is pretty evenly split, there’s something very off about these figures.

8. Ryanair – GAP 71.8 per cent

Don’t be fooled by the male to female pilot ratio (546 of which are male while only eight pilots are female). Ryanair’s pay gap is woefully large compared to its rivals. For every £1 that men earn at the airline per median hourly rate, women earn just 28p.

9. Connells Survey and Valuation – GAP 71.0 per cent

Does what it says on the tin. Building surveys and home buyer reports. Women potentially not “historically” interested in this either.

10. Fosse Healthcare – GAP 69.8 per cent

Healthcare strikes the gender pay gap imbalance again! This time, the East Midlands home care provider is among the culprits. Perhaps because most care work is undertaken by women? Still, sort it out, Fosse.

And then there were the 1500 companies who just didn’t bother filing at all.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait around a month for these to be made public, while the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) sends out reminder letters and prepares to investigate fraudulent looking figures and failure to comply with the law.

Is your company one of them? Visit the government website here to find out.

Mad about your company’s gender pay gap? Here’s what you can do about it.

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.