Amazon UK reveals gender pay gap of 0.7% in women's favour

Amazon has published the gender pay gap for its UK operations, revealing a median gender pay gap of -0.7% in favour of women and a mean gender pay gap of 6.1% in favour of men.

The median bonus gender pay gap reported is 0% and mean bonus gender pay gap is 15.9%. In 2017, 47.5% of Amazon UK's female employees received a bonus in comparison to 45.9% of male employees.

The headline figures are for Amazon's overall UK operations, which includes six different legal entities, including its warehouses all over the country. Of these six individual legal entities, all bar one revealed a median gender pay gap in favour of men. The same five groups all showed a bonus pay gap in favour of men of at least 90% for both median and mean averages.

At Amazon Video Ltd, women dominate the lowest paid jobs, making up 76.1% of the lowest pay quartile, while occupying only 38.5% of roles in the top pay quartile. On average women’s median hourly rate for this business arm is 56% lower than men’s and their mean hourly rate is 40.1% lower than men’s. At Amazon Online UK Limited, the median and mean gender pay gap is 17.4%; at Amazon Web Services UK Limited, the median gender pay gap is 18.4% (the same as the national average) and the mean 15.8%; at the Amazon Development Centre (London) Limited the median gap is 17.4% and mean gap is 22.7%; at Amazon EU SARL, UK Branch, the median gap is 19% and mean gap is 18.2%.

However, Amazon UK Services Ltd accounts for 84.9% of the company's total UK headcount. In this area of the company, which includes its warehouses, women make up less than a third of the workforce in every pay quartile. The median gender pay gap is -0.1% in favour of women while the mean gender pay gap is 2.1% in favour of men. 

A spokesperson for Amazon said: “Our gender pay gap analysis shows a -0.7% difference in favour of women, compared to the UK average of 18.4% in favour of men. At Amazon we are committed to building a diverse, merit-based organisation which is reflected in our diversity initiatives and gender pay gap performance. We have programmes that we’re continually working to further improve, to actively recruit and help advance more women into senior and technology-focused roles as we grow our business here in the UK.”    

According to data collected by the Office for National Statistics last April, the national average gender pay gap (full and part-time workers) is 18.4% for median earnings and 17.4% for mean earnings. 

The UK government's new legislation requires companies with 250 or more employees to annually report the median and mean percentage difference in hourly pay and average pay between men and women, along with the difference in bonus awards.

Referring to different types of average, median is the figure that falls in middle of all employees' salaries from lowest to highest paid, while the mean is calculated by dividing the total wages of a company by its number of staff.