Gender pay gap widens in FTSE100 boardrooms

Only one of the 50 highest paid directorships on the boards of Britain’s most valuable blue chip companies is held by a woman, a new gender pay gap survey reveals today.

Emma Walmsley, CEO of pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline, who earned a package worth £8.2 million last year, is the sole female representative on a FTSE 100 top pay list overwhelmingly dominated by men.

The survey shows that while women are increasingly strongly represented on FTSE 100 boards they tend to be appointed to lower paid, part time non-executive roles rather than the far more richly rewarded chief executive officer and chief financial officer posts.

As a result women FTSE-100 directors earn 74% less than their male counterparts on average, a far bigger pay gap than within the working population as a whole, the research reveals. It has widened slightly from 73% last year.

The annual survey carried out by communications firm Mattison Public Relations shows the average pay for all FTSE 100 female directors standing at £246,000 compared with £935,000 for men.

Pay rises were also bigger for men with an average of 7% or £59,000 compared with 4% or £9,000 for women. This is likely to be because men hold more roles where performance related elements such as bonuses or long term incentive plans (LTIP) make up a large element of the overall package.

The research shows that despite the progress towards diversity in recent years, the high command of the private sector still has a massive male majority.

Of the 238 executive positions on FTSE 100 boards, just 34, or 14% are filled by women. The average FTSE 100 executive director is now paid £2.7 million and the highest paid was Sébastien de Montessus, chief executive of Endeavour Mining, who received total renumeration of £17.5 million.

By contrast, women  hold 393, or 43%, of the 896 non-executive roles on FTSE 100 boards. These roles are much lower-paid, averaging only £137,000 per year.

But even within non-executive roles, female directors are paid markedly less than their male counterparts. Women non-executives received £101,000 on average last year, while male non executives were paid £166,000 on average.

Maria Hughes, director at Mattison Public Relations, said: “Businesses want to communicate their commitment to diversity but excluding women from executive board positions isn’t going to do that in 2022.”

“The way a business communicates its diversity has become a very important issue for many stakeholders, from shareholders to customers.”

“Having female senior executives is a much more powerful way to communicate that a business is taking diversity seriously. Businesses must appoint women to their senior executive teams and enable women to progress through the ranks more quickly if they want to be perceived as taking this seriously as opposed to box-ticking.”

The research comes as one of Europe’s biggest beverage companies announces a new female boss following its sale by Unilever. The owner of the Lipton, PG Tips and Pukka brands ekaterra said former L’Oreal executive Nathalie Roos will be its boss.