STV lacks '˜senior women' with gender pay gap of 24 per cent

The Glasgow-based company said it does not have “enough senior women” and pledged that it would shift its focus on how it recruits, with an aim to achieve gender balance among its top quarter of earners by 2023.

STV is the latest firm to publish its gender pay gap figures, with just two-thirds of all UK companies having done so so far. The deadline for all UK firms to do so is just two weeks away, with noncompliant companies facing legal action, the government has warned.

Data from the government Equalities Office showed yesterday that, of the 2,743 firms that have so far published their gender pay gap, 77 per cent have a median gender pay gap in favour of men and 14.3 per cent have a gap in favour of women.

STV said that in the upper quartile of earners at the firm, 70 per cent are men and 30 per cent women, while throughout the rest of the organisation, the gender split is 49 per cent men and 51 per cent women.

When salaries are measured through a median average – the middle of the distribution – STV’s gap is lower at 17 per cent.

It said it also had a mean gender pay gap for bonus pay of 56 per cent and a median gender pay gap for bonus pay of 34 per cent. Over the reporting period, however, a higher proportion of female colleagues received a bonus payment: 17 per cent of women, versus 15 per cent of men.

Simon Pitts, chief executive of STV, said the firm would widen the pool in recruitment activities; focusing on opportunities for accelerated career development; extending family friendly policies and further training across the organisation to raise awareness of unconscious bias.

He said: “We are committed to ensuring that STV is a place where men and women have an equal opportunity to succeed and reach their full potential. Our mean gender pay gap of 22.8 per cent shows we are not where we need to be, particularly at the top of our organisation where, in common with many other organisations, there aren’t enough senior women.

“To address this we are setting the target of achieving gender balance amongst our top 25 per cent of earners within five years. We will deliver this by focusing on how we recruit, on training, and on accelerated career development.”

The STV report also revealed that 12 per cent of staff at the firm work on a part time basis, of which 98 per cent are women. Last week HSBC revealed that it has a mean gender pay gap of 59 per cent – the largest yet for a British financial firm.