Calculate your gender pay gap

A two step guide to calculate your average gender pay gap

The aim of calculating your gender pay gap is to be able to compare the pay received by all men and women in your organisation. To produce one figure for the whole organisation, the methodology set out below includes all full-time and part-time workers and employees at all levels in the organisation.

Having a gender pay gap does not necessarily mean that your organisation has an equal pay issue. For example, women and men might be paid the same for jobs that are of equal value, but there may be more women in lower-paid positions, and more men in higher paid positions. In this situation, you might want to think about what you could do to encourage more women into senior positions. For more information see our frequently asked questions.

Step 1:

The first stage in the calculation of the pay gap is separately to determine the average gross hourly pay (excluding overtime) of men and of women in your firm.

It is preferable to calculate your pay gap based on hourly earnings, although annual pay (pro-rata for part-time staff) could also be used if calculating hourly earnings is not feasible (see Frequently Asked Questions here).

You should do this using your payroll information. For the purposes of this exercise you should use the simple average or mean. All permanent employees should be included, including part-time workers. There should be no weighting of employees related to the number of hours they work.

Step 2:

Now that you have two figures for the average pay, one for women in your work force and one for men in your workforce, the calculation of the gap is simple.

If the average pay of women is lower than that for men, subtract the average pay of women from the average pay of men. Then divide by the average pay of men. This will give you your percentage figure for the size of the pay gap. If the average pay of women is higher than that of men, you should reverse the denominator and divide the difference in pay by average women’s pay.

Example

If the average pay of men in your workforce is £12 per hour and the average pay of women is £10 per hour. The gap is:

Post Your Pay Gap

Once you have calculated your gender pay gap, you may wish to post it on this website. By encouraging people to post their pay gap we hope to see greater transparency and more equality in pay between men and women. You can post your pay gap on this web site by emailing us on enquiries@geo.gsi.gov.uk.

Gender Pay Gaps in Central Government Departments

The following table shows the gender pay gaps in various Government departments (pay gaps were calculated according to the methodology set out above, using annual salaries of full-time and part-time employees, with part-time workers’ salaries on a full-time equivalent basis). The gaps below do not compare like-for-like work. Instead, they reflect differences in the number of women and men in higher and lower paid jobs.