U.K. public service broadcaster ITV has taken positive strides towards reducing its gender pay and ethnicity gaps, its annual report has revealed.
The “Love Island” broadcaster’s 2020 Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap Report reveals that the median pay gap rose slightly from the 2019 figure of 8.7% to 9.8% in 2020, but the mean gender pay gap has reduced for the third year in a row, from 13.2% to 12.1%. Both numbers remain below the U.K. average.
According to the U.K. Office for National Statistics, the country’s overall median gender pay gap is currently 15.5%.
Legislation passed in 2017 requires U.K. employers to disclose average pay calculated in two different ways: using the median and mean methods. Under the median method, if all women were lined up in order of their pay, and so were all men, the median pay for men and the median pay for women would be the pay of the individual in the middle of each line. The median gender pay gap compares these two values.
Under the mean method, the pay of all women is added together and then divided by the number of women, and the pay of all men is totalled and then divided by the number of men. The mean gender pay gap compares these two values.
The report also reveals that the gender balance of the ITV workforce remains strong, with more women than men overall — 53.2% women versus 46.8% men.
“Our gender pay gap exists because of the make-up of our workforce, with more men than women working in the most senior or highly paid roles at ITV, and more women than men in lower paying roles,” the report states. “However, the number of women in the upper quartile pay band has increased from 42.0% in 2017 to 45.1% in 2020. In the upper middle pay band, the number of women has also increased from 47.6% in 2017 to 51.1% in 2020.”
The numbers are similarly encouraging when it comes to the ethnicity pay gap, which ITV is not required to publish by law, but chooses to voluntarily. Here, the median pay gap has plummeted from 5.1% in 2019 to 0.1% in 2020 and the mean pay gap has dropped from 6.7% in 2019 to 1.7% in 2020.
The proportion of employees from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds in the upper quartile pay band has increased from 10.6% in 2018 to 14.0% in 2020. In the upper middle pay band, the number of employees from BAME backgrounds has also increased from 10.7% in 2018 to 11.8% in 2020.