The recruiter polled the views of 2,000 people across the UK and found that, over the last six months, only 43 per cent of women reported having received a pay rise (in the form of higher wages, a salary increase, and / or a bigger bonus) — compared to 50 per cent of men. The seven percentage point gap in the UK is far wider than the average gap of four percentage points recorded by Randstad internationally.
Furthermore, while 9 per cent of men say they have received a “significant” pay rise in the last six months, only 4 per cent of women say the same.
With approximately 15.7 million women employed across the country, women in the UK have been shortchanged to the tune of over 1 million pay rises over the last six months.
Victoria Short, chief executive of Randstad UK, said: “This study’s findings are disheartening and shed light on a stark reality — pay inequality persists in the UK. It’s alarming to see that a significant number of women in the UK are being denied well-deserved salary increases and bonuses, further amplifying the existing wage gap. Gender pay equity is still a long way off when pay rises are being orchestrated and awarded so unevenly.”
Meanwhile, the research also found that three in every ten women in work (30 per cent) say their job does not provide the pay they need to live the life they want — compared to one quarter of men (25 per cent).
This is not a function of women attaching less importance to their pay than men. Marginally more women than men say pay is important to them when thinking about their current job and / or potential future employment — 94 per cent compared to 93 per cent of men.
Randstad’s research found that 21 per cent of women in the UK had requested or campaigned for better pay at work; that one in eight women (13 per cent) agreed “I have threatened to quit to negotiate better pay”; and that a fifth of women (20 per cent) reported having actually quit due to low pay.
However, women in similar G7 economies were more likely to take similar action. Almost half (47 per cent) of women in Italy had requested or campaigned for better pay at work; that one in five women in France (20 per cent) agreed “I have threatened to quit to negotiate better pay”; and that three in ten women in Canada (30 per cent) reported having actually quit due to low pay.
Victoria Short said: “It’s not the fault of women not wanting it enough. We care. Women have told us that they are taking action to minimise the effects of the discrimination. They’re asking for more pay. They’re threatening to leave unless they get it. And in many cases, they’re jumping ship to organisations that value them more highly. Unless the attitude of employers changes, they will have to do this more often and take their lead from employees in Italy, France, and Canada.”
Randstad also asked employees, “What do you consider to be most important in an employer’s equality, diversity, inclusion, and belonging policies?”. While more than four in ten women (41 per cent) named Gender Pay Equity as their top priority, only a quarter of men (25 per cent) said the same. In France, 64 per cent of women said gender pay equity — as did four in every ten men (42 per cent).
Victoria Short said, “On the one hand, the gender pay gap does not necessarily reflect how well companies treat women. On the other, if so many women are saying their top equality, diversity, and inclusion priority is gender pay equity — there’s clearly still a problem.”
In a bid to improve equality in the workplace, Theresa May’s government made it mandatory for bigger companies to publish a comparison of the average pay earned by men and women at their organisations in 2017. This year, the deadline for gender pay gap reporting will fall on 5th April, 28 days after International Women’s Day.
All organisations, including charities, with 250 or more employees were asked to publish their median and mean “gender pay gap” data in the hopes that transparency would incentivise businesses to reduce disparities.
The gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay, which measures whether men and women are paid the same for the same job. Instead, it compares the difference in women and men’s average earnings across an organisation at a point in time, regardless of their role. Even if an employer pays women and men equally, it could have a gender pay gap if the majority of women are employed in lower-paid jobs.
Victoria Short said, “A company with a few well-remunerated men and lots of less-well paid women on the payroll will show a large gender pay gap, despite the organisation treating men and women doing the same job exactly the same. We’ve come across organisations with large levels of disparity trying extremely hard to eliminate gender pay gaps — while less committed organisations recording lower gender pay gaps simply because of the composition of their workforce. “But if an employer’s workforce consists of lots of women at the bottom of the payscale and none at the top, year after year, then it’s likely they need to hire and promote more women.” Women in the UK miss out on 1 million pay rises
