New stats confirm the shocking gender pay gap between male and female bosses in the UK. Women at the top earn on average 22% less than their male counterparts. Or to put it another way: pay equivalent to working 100 minutes a day for free, or (gulp) 57 days a year.
The survery of 72,000 managers in the UK by Chartered Management Institute and the pay analysts XPertHR, showed that in terms of salary, the average disparity between male and female managers is a staggering £8,524, with men on average earning £39,136 compared to £30,612 for their female peers.
The gap has only closed by 1% since 2014. Progress simply shocking considering the equal pay act was introduced 45 years ago.
Indeed, as Mark Crail, content director of XpertHR says: “An entire generation has now worked its way through from school leaver to retirement since the first equal pay legislation came into effect in 1970, yet the gender pay gap persists. Many employers still prefer not to know just how bad it is in their organisation rather than getting to grips with the data and doing something about it.”
There are now more women in the UK in senior executive roles than ever, and generation Y are said to be even more ambitious than their predecessors. Hence how last year's Ban Bossy campaign, which included Beyonce's takeaway quote "I'm not bossy, I'm the boss," resonated so strongly. But the pay gap in the UK is enough to dishearten even the most driven female leaders. Equally demanding jobs should be paid equally, pure and simple.
However, next year new rules implemented by the government should give female bosses, and women at every level, a powerful tool against discriminative pay, even if they can't get those precious hours back.
As of early next year, existing pay transparency legislation - which Grazia rallied for with our Mind The Pay Gap campaign - will be compulsory. This change in law will mean the 10 million women employed by companies of 250 employees or more will have access to vital information about their pay gap. Hopefully it will make companies think twice about how fairly they pay men and women respectively.