British Library cuts gender pay gap

The British Library cut its gender pay gap in the year to end March 2018, after "concentrating efforts on attracting women into senior positions."

According to the latest data submitted to the government ahead of the April deadline, women at the British Library earned 0.4% less than men per hour, compared to 1.81% the previous year, according to the median calculation. Women were paid a median of £14.38 an hour across the organisation’s staff in the year in question, with men earning £14.43.  Last year’s report showed men’s median hourly pay was £14.37 compared to women at £14.11, a difference of 1.8%. The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle.

Looking at the mean hourly rate - the average hourly wage across the entire organisation - the British Library has cut its gender pay gap by a third, with women paid a mean average of £16.07 an hour across the organisation’s staff, with men earning £16.73, a gap of 6.22%. 

In the British Library in 2017 women earned on average 0.94p for every £1 earned by men and in 2018, this increased to 0.96p. The British Library said: “This is still not good enough and we will push hard to eliminate this gap at the latest by 2023, the Library’s 50th anniversary year.”

The BL’s gap is narrower than the national figure, with the national mean pay gap for full-time and part-time staff (excluding overtime) at 17.1% and the median at 17.9%, according to the Office for National Statistics. But the institution has pledged to eliminate the gap completely by 2023. 

When it comes to bonuses, the gap is wider at 14.58%, with 0.12% of women receiving bonus pay compared to 0.28% of men. But this still represents an improvement on last year’s gap which saw women’s median bonus pay 25.45% lower than men’s.

Women make up 54% of the British Library’s workforce, which includes its publishing arm, as of 5th April 2018, with men making up 46%. When it comes to the highest paid, women make up 51.9% of the top quartile, an increase of 2% from last year's report statistics. Last year men dominated the senior leadership team with 65% of managers male and just 35% female. This year the British Library says it has been “concentrating efforts on attracting women into senior positions” with women now representing 36.36% of senior management. 

The British Library, which at the time of the report has 1582 members of staff, has made ‘Unconscious Bias’ training mandatory for all employees as well as online equality training as part of its five year plan to drive change. “Since the GPG 2017 report was published, we have seen more dialogue across the organisation including a marked increase in questions on equality during our most recent Ask Senior Leadership Team internal event,” said the Library. 

Chief executive of the British Library Roly Keating (pictured above) said: “One of the British Library’s long-term aspirations is to have a workforce as diverse as the collections we hold, and a key benchmark for progress is our gender pay gap data, which we published for the first time last year. While I’m pleased to report that the figure for the second year is a third lower – at 3.89%, down from 6.22% last year – we will continue to work hard to ensure that we honour our commitment to eliminate the gap between men and women working at the Library by 2023 at the very latest.” 

All employers with more than 250 staff are required by law to report their gender pay gaps under the Equality Act 2010 Regulations for 2017. Few have submitted their date before the April deadline, with the vast majority of publishers and retailers in the book industry yet to do so. Explaining its decision to publish ahead of the deadline, the British Library said: "As with the previous figure, we have published the current snapshot results earlier than the deadline to demonstrate our commitment to eliminating the gender pay gap. The British Library is making substantial progress in closing gender pay gap between men and women, however this critical work is far from over and we will continue to make positive and lasting changes to support our commitment to eliminate the gender pay gap."

The report comes after Hachette UK called on all the major publishers "to be transparent" when reporting their gender pay gaps in April, specifically by disclosing numbers with and without their distribution arms included, after reporting its own results four months ahead of the deadline.