Bloomsbury median gender pay gap rises to 21.7%

Bloomsbury Publishing’s median gender pay gap has grown to 21.7% in 2018 from 17.2% the year before although its mean figure fell slightly, according to its latest report.

The firm’s mean pay gap stood at 22.9%, slightly down from 23.3% in 2017. Women make up 70% of the company’s workforce and form the majority in all its paybands, with four of its seven division heads being female.

In terms of bonuses, the median gap stood at 28.3%, well down from 46% in 2017, with the mean hitting 56%, up by 5%. Bonuses were given to 15.9% of men and 11.9% of women.

The latest snapshot, published on 3rd April, one day before the national deadline, was based on data from 5th April 2018.

Since 2017, Bloomsbury said it had taken a number of actions including providing training in unconscious bias, benchmarking its gender pay gap against the rest of the publishing industry and providing executive coaching to women in senior positions.

C.e.o. Nigel Newton said: “While we are pleased with the progress we’ve made, we want to achieve much more. We are confident that the additional initiatives we have introduced since April 2018 will help deliver further improvements in our gender pay gap for 2019.”

Women made up 56.7% of the company’s top pay quartile, with 81% in the lowest bracket.

The report vowed to take further action to develop its employees. It stated: “We will expand our provision of training, mentoring and employee development programmes for early- and mid-career employees to provide them with opportunities to grow their leadership and management capabilities so that they are equipped to progress in their careers.”

All employers with more than 250 staff are required by law to report their gender pay gaps by 4th April. Publishing firms including Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan have all published their results.

Hachette has called on publishers to be transparent about the effects of distribution staff figures on their gender pay gap reports.