And it favours women

Scotland's largest housing association has reported an astonishing pay gap of 25% in favour of women.

Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) has a gender staff split of 59.5% favouring men yet showed that its 40.5% of women staff get paid proportionately more, bucking the national trend.

Its area housing managers, who form most of the top quartile of its pay scale, show a split of 72% women to 28% men.

Men make up a clear majority in the lower earning 50% of staff largely because GHA’s Neighbourhood Environmental Teams are made up of 97% men and 3% women.

These staff provide a range of manual jobs including concierge services in multi-storey blocks and grounds maintenance.

Steven Henderson, group director of finance, said: “Our family-friendly policies and flexible working options have had an extremely positive impact on our ability to attract and retain women. We recognise we still need to do more to attract men into housing office positions.”

Under Equality Act regulations, employers - including third sector organisations - with more than 250 employees had until 4 April 2018 to publish information about their gender pay on their website and on a government website.

Just 13 Scottish housing associations were eligible to report the data in Scotland, under the new legislation, showing the mean gap between women and men’s pay overall in the sector was 7.7%.

Hanover Scotland recorded the biggest median pay gap of 26.5% and a mean pay gap of 23.2%

A spokesperson for the association said: “While Hanover Scotland ensures equal pay in all jobs, it is committed to reducing its published gender pay gap.

“We are therefore reviewing all pay policies, procedures and systems in 2018.”