By law employers must publish their average gender pay gap

Britain’s biggest charities are addressing the gender pay gap as new data shows a 7% decrease between the average salaries of men and women.

Figures from Charity Finance 100 Index shows that the top 50 charities have decreased the gap from 18% to 11%.

Marie Stopes International is the charity with the largest pay gap, with a mean gap of 44.7% in favour of men.

It said that differences in the pay gap were due to there being disproportionately more men in certain divisions of the workforce. At statement read: “Equality for women is at the heart of everything that we do, and are fully committed to ensuring that there are no barriers or biases in place at Marie Stopes International that deny equality of opportunity to women or any other group in society.”

Guide Dogs reported an increase in pay gap of 1.8% from 12.8% to 14.6% in favour of men. A spokesperson said: “During 2018, we commissioned an external independent adviser to look at our gender pay gap. This resulting findings showed that any gender pay disparity at Guide Dogs does not appear to be due to a lack of female representation at senior levels.”

Save the Children narrowed its pay gap from 18.8% to 10.9% in favour of men. It said: “We have updated our training for line managers, introducing training modules on unconscious bias to ensure our interview skills training is values-based.”

By law employers must publish their average gender pay gap and average bonus gender pay gap as both a mean and median average. They must also publish the proportion of men and women receiving a bonus, and the proportion of males and females in each pay quartile ordered from lowest to highest pay. It is illegal to pay men and women different salaries for the same job.