‘True’ gender pay gap sits at around 5.5%, says Glassdoor

Women earn about 77p for every pound a man earns, a new multi-country study from Glassdoor has revealed.

Using data from thousands of salary reports that employees submit online, the career review site found an ‘adjusted’ gender pay gap for the UK of around 5.5%, far smaller than the figure reported by the Office for National Statistics which sets the gap at 19.2%.

Its report, Demystifying the Gender Pay Gap, looked at a wide range of factors such as age, job location, years of experience, education level, job title and employer to come up with its adjusted figures.

“In other words, a woman with the same job title, at the same employer, in the same location, with a comparable age, education and years of experience, will still be paid over 5% less than a man. This finding is consistent across each country the report studies,” the report said.

These factors are those that can be ‘explained’, Glassdoor said, but there are still factors behind the gender pay gap that remain unexplained. This could be down to issues such as workplace bias (intentional or otherwise), different negotiation skills or other unobserved workplace characteristics.

The study reveals that the largest contributing factor (38%) to the gender pay gap is explained by differences in how men and women sort into occupations and industries with varying earning potential. Less of the gap is explained by gender differences in education, age or years of experience (26%).

“Women and men tend pursue different career paths early in life and then sort into different industries and occupations, which, in large part, is due to a variety of societal expectations and traditional gender norms. This is the single largest factor we see contributing to today’s gender pay gap,” said Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor’s chief economist.