Facebook pays women on average 9.9 per cent less than men in the UK – but its bonus gap is much bigger
Facebook has revealed it pays women on average 9.9 per cent less than men in the UK though its bonus gap was considerably wider at 41.5 per cent.
The tech giant said women’s median bonus pay was 41.5 per cent lower than men, with 86.3 per cent of women and 87.8 per cent of men receiving a bonus.
Its 9.9 per cent was considerably lower than Google UK’s, which had reported a 16 per cent median hourly rate gender pay gap earlier in the week.
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Nearly 30 per cent of its highest paid quartile were women, while 39.2 per cent of its lowest paid quartile was.
In a statement alongside the figures, Facebook said the reason for the gap was “unequal representation”.
It said:
Like many other companies in our industry, we have more men than women working at Facebook. This is particularly evident in our large engineering workforce, which represents over half of our 1,500 employees in the UK, and across our senior leadership positions.
Technical roles also tend to drive higher market rates of pay, both in terms of salary and total compensation, due to the demand for specialised skills.
The gender pay gap is different to equal pay, and firms reporting their figures have emphasised this, with Facebook reiterating that women and men receive equal pay for equal work.
To improve its gender pay gap, Facebook is looking to increase the representation of women in technical and leadership roles across the firm.
It said:
We hold ourselves accountable because this matters to us. In 2017, the number of women employees globally rose from 33 per cent to 35 per cent and the number of women in technical roles increased from 17 per cent to 19 per cent. Between 2014 when we first publicly reported our representation data and 2017, the number of women in leadership roles has increased from 23 per cent to 28 per cent.
Firms with over 250 employees have until 1 April to publish the numbers, and around 9,000 will need to. With just a couple of days to go though, 5,914 had done so.
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