Women ‘without wages for four months due to gender pay gap’

Recently, all companies with 250 or more staff were required to report their gender pay figures, with more than three-quarters of companies nationally showing a gap in pay favouring male employees.

In North Yorkshire, Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures show women in work earned an average annual salary of £18,435 in 2018 – 32% lower than the average man’s salary of £27,262.

It means that, in effect, women in North Yorkshire worked for free from September 4 last year.

The average pay figures are calculated using a median, rather than mean, average, to stop them being skewed by particularly small or large pay packets.

The difference in pay can partly be explained by the number of women in part-time work. An estimated 39,000 women in the area were in part-time work last year, around 45% of the female workforce.

Of the 97,000 working men, too few were in part-time work for the ONS to provide an estimate. Despite that, the difference in pay was still evident in full-time roles: men in North Yorkshire earned an average of £30,844 last year, and women £24,481 – 21% less.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Big employers clearly aren’t doing enough to tackle the root causes of pay inequality and working women are paying the price.

“Government needs to crank up the pressure. Companies shouldn’t just be made to publish their gender pay gaps, they should be legally required to explain how they’ll close them, and bosses who flout the law should be fined.”

Minister for women and equalities, Penny Mordaunt, said: “Actions to tackle the gender pay gap are good for business. That’s why we have produced support to help employers close their gaps.

“We recognise that in order to close the gap entirely we still need a much wider cultural change, that is why we have introduced a range of initiatives to tackle the drivers of the gap, including shared parental leave and spending around £6 billion on childcare support.”