Gender pay gap figures reveal women in the media earn a lot less than men and get fewer top jobs. Here are the worst offending bosses.

Firms with over 250 employees were made to publish their gender pay gap figures today, following new rules introduced by Prime Minister Theresa May last year.

The findings proved unsurprising for women working in the new world, who’ve known all along they get a very bad deal indeed.

No less than 91% of Britain’s media companies paid men more than women on an average hourly rate.

The country’s average gender pay gap is just over 18%. But in the media it can go up to 37%.

Here are the worst offenders:

#1 Conde Nast

The publishers of Vogue, Tatler and Glamour are also the worst women employers, reporting a whopping 36.9% gender pay gap among their staff. The company made up by having a zero gender difference in their bonus payments this year.

#2 Telegraph

The second guiltiest company among the media titans was undoubtedly the Telegraph Media Group (TMG), where women are paid over a third less than their male colleagues. To top it off, TMG’s top earners are nearly 75% men. But among their lowest-paid staff close to 62% are women. Men were also found to earn disproportionately larger bonuses than women working in the company – nearly twice larger packages, in fact.

Ironically, the Daily Telegraph had been the PM’s chosen newspaper to write about the publication of the figures, just two days ago.

In her opinion piece, Theresa May wrote: 

“By making this information public, organisations will no longer have anywhere to hide. We will have established a baseline from which to hold them to account in the future. Shareholders and customers will expect to see improvements, and will be able to hold organisations to account if they fail to achieve them.”

#3 LBC

Global Radio, which owns radio stations LBC, Smooth FM and Heart, was also guilty of a 34.5% pay gap between men and women. The radio mega-group employs around 1200 people, and made a cool £282 million last year.

On the upside, Global’s top earners are slightly more balanced on the gender divide, with 36% of their upper quartile being women. That said, of the £67.4 million the group spent on salaries, no less than £6.1 million went to three members of their eight-person board of directors.

A board made only of men, of course. 

#4 Economist

Women working for the magazine are paid a mean 32.5% less on average than men. What is more, they only make up 24% of the top earning members of staff.

Perhaps not so surprising since it took The Economist 171 years to appoint a woman as editor-in-chief. Three years after Zanny Minton Beddoes’ got the job and the pay gap is still rather shocking.

#5 The Sun

While The Sun‘s owner News UK reported a mean gender pay gap of 15%, matters inside the daily were a whole lot worse. In fact, women working for the newspaper can count on nearly 25% less cash than the men at the office. And it gets worse: an absolutely flabbergasting 84% of The Sun‘s top quartile is made up of men.

But, then again, this is the paper that counts Rod Little as one of its columnists.

Joana Ramiro is a reporter for Left Foot Forward. You can follow her on Twitter for all sorts of rants here.

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