Women managers earn 22 percent less than male counterparts, and have smaller bonuses
By Tom Clark
LONDON, Aug 25 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Britain's female managers work for free for nearly two hours every day, according to a new survey.
When the pay of women managers is compared to that of male counterparts, women are shown to earn 22 percent less -- meaning they effectively go unpaid for one hour and 40 minutes a day, said the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) on Tuesday.
Prime Minister David Cameron in July vowed to end the "scandal" of the gender pay gap in a generation, announcing that all British companies with more than 250 employees must publish the gap between average female and male earnings.
The gender pay gap among professionals in Britain now stands at more than 8,500 pounds ($13,400), down slightly on last year's figure of just over 9,000 pounds, said the survey, published with salary specialist XpertHR.
"An entire generation has now worked its way through from school leaver to retirement since the first equal pay legislation came into effect in 1970, yet the gender pay gap persists," said Mark Crail, content director of XpertHR.
"Many employers still prefer not to know just how bad it is in their organisation rather than getting to grips with the data and doing something about it."
The survey also reveals that while women make up 67 percent of the workforce in entry-level roles, only 43 percent of senior managers are women, with the figure dropping to 29 percent at director level.
Female managers are also losing out on bonuses, with the average male manager's bonus of nearly 5,000 pounds almost double that of the average woman's bonus.
In 2014, British women effectively worked for free from Nov. 5 until the end of the year, a report from campaign group the Fawcett Society in November 2014 concluded.
"One way forward would be to ensure that senior roles are advertised on a part-time basis or as a job-share unless there is a good business case for not doing so," Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said, commenting on the new survey.
According to Eurostat, the gender pay gap in the European Union ranges from less than 10 percent in Slovenia, Malta, Poland, Italy, Croatia, Luxembourg and Romania, to more than 20 percent in Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, and almost 30 percent in Estonia. ($1 = 0.6357 pounds) (Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
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