Macmillan, Scholastic report gender pay gaps

Monday, 1 April 2019 Books+Publishing

Macmillan and Scholastic are the latest UK publishers to report gender pay gaps as part of government regulations that require companies with 250 or more employees to report the difference in pay between men and women.

Macmillan reported a median gender pay gap of 28% in favour of women (a fall from 34% in 2017), while Scholastic reported a median gender pay gap of 8.8% in favour of men (a slight rise from 8.5% in 2017), compared to the national median of 17.9%.

At Macmillan, the difference in bonus payments has risen in favour of men. While 63% of those workers who earned a bonus in 2018 were women, men’s bonuses were 70% higher on average, due to the company’s three most senior leaders all being men.

Scholastic’s report shows women earn 91p for every £1 that men earn when comparing median hourly wages. The company’s mean gender pay gap dropped to 14.2% (from 15.2% in 2017). When it comes to bonuses, 32% of women and 29% of men received a bonus in 2018, compared with 2017 figures of 33% for women and 37% for men.

Scholastic co-managing directors Catherine Bell and Steve Thompson said that the company’s pay gap data was affected by the fact that 38% of Scholastic’s employees work flexibly and around 20% only work during school terms. But they stressed that all men and women are paid the same wages for equivalent roles.

They wrote: ‘Although our median bonus pay gap remains significantly in favour of women, and our mean pay gap reduced by 0.93% from the previous year, we recognise the need to maintain our efforts to reduce our gap further.’

The gender pay gap reports are publicly available on the UK government’s website.

Category: International news