Oil giant Shell reveals a 22% gender pay gap

Female staff at Shell earn more than a fifth less than their male colleagues, the oil giant has revealed.
Significant progress has been made says Shell, but more neededSignificant progress has been made says Shell, but more needed
Significant progress has been made says Shell, but more needed

The FTSE 100 group’s gender pay gap report showed a difference of 22.2% on average for male and female employees in the UK.

But it said it was “confident” it had equal pay, stressing that the gap was down to the lack of women in senior management roles and higher-paid technical and trading jobs.

Two-thirds of staff are male and just 33% female, it said.

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It marks the latest damning report on gender pay gap after airline easyJet reported on Monday that female staff earned 45.5% less than male employees.

The Bank of England also recently reported a gap of 21%.

Sinead Lynch, Shell’s UK chairman, said: “Equal pay ensures men and women are paid equally for work of equal value.

“Through our robust and non-discriminatory pay processes, we are confident we have equal pay, however, we do have a gender pay gap.”

The report comes as new UK rules require all UK companies and public sector organisations with 250 or more staff to publish their gender pay gap for the year to April 2017.

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Shell admitted it had “some way to go” to address the gender balance in its workforce, but said it was making progress with a 12% increase in the number of women managers since 2015 and 47% of graduate positions now held by women.

Ronan Cassidy, chief human resources and corporate officer at Shell, said: “Are we where we aspire to be? No.

“But we should recognise the significant progress we have made, especially the marked change in gender balance at recruitment and the increase in senior leadership representation, and draw confidence from that for the future.”

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