Men at Bloomsbury earn median of 17.2% more than women

Men earn a median average of 17.2% more than women at Bloomsbury, and a mean average of 23.3% more.

The company attributed the difference to three of Bloomsbury's four board executive directors being men, and its starting positions being primarily filled by female employees, “in common with much of the industry”. The company said this brings down the overall average hourly pay rate for women, resulting in a difference in pay between the sexes. The overall proportion of women to men at the publisher is 70:30, with a majority of women in all pay band quartiles.

New government legislation requires companies with 250 or more employees to annually report their median and mean percentage difference in hourly pay and average pay between men and women, along with the difference in bonuses, by 4th April. The median figure falls in the 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.

The company’s median gender pay gap is just below the UK national average of 18.4%, while the mean is much higher at Bloomsbury than the national average of 17.4%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Men are also paid more in bonuses than women at Bloomsbury - by a mean average of 51% and a median average of 46.0%. The company said only a “small number” of employees in senior roles receive a bonus – 16% of men and 8.6% of women, with the bonus gap resulting from sales commission payments to a small number of men and "Long Term Incentive Plan payments" to statutory board executive directors.

To address the gap, Bloomsbury has said it will develop its training and employee development processes for early- and mid-career employees to provide them with opportunities to “grow their leadership and management capabilities so that they are better equipped to progress in their careers”. The company has also pledged to benchmark its gender pay gap against the publishing industry, as well as providing unconscious bias, equality and diversity training.

By contrast to Bloomsbury, publishers Penguin Random House UK and Macmillan have median gender pay gaps in favour of women employees. The Hachette Group has a median gender pay gap also in favour of women, but when breaking out the results for its Hachette UK Ltd legal entity, the median pay gap grows to almost 25% in men's favour. Its c.e.o. David Shelley called it a "bleak" state of affairs and vowed the company would do better, setting itself an ambitious target for its top pay quartile to be made up of 66% women by 2020. HarperCollins, meanwhile, recorded a 10.4% median gender pay gap.

Among scholarly and education publishers, Springer Nature recorded a 15.12% median pay gap, while earlier Pearson reported one of 15%.

The deadline for companies with over 250 employees to report their data is Thursday 4th April.

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