Gender pay gap: progress and ongoing commitment 

Last updated 15 April 2024

Our gender pay gap results measured in April 2023, and published on Welcome to GOV.UK in April 2024, found our gender pay gap is at the narrowest since pay reporting was introduced in 2017/18.

The median* pay gap is now 0.0%. This is the difference between the hourly pay of the man and the woman in the middle of a list of hourly pay ordered from highest to lowest paid. The median pay gap decrease by 2.5% compared to the previous year.

The mean** pay gap is 6.5%. This figure is the difference between the average hourly pay of all the men and women working at the British Red Cross. The mean pay gap decreased by 3.8% compared to the previous year.

We are very pleased to see a continual reduction in our gender pay gap. This is due to a number of initiatives we have introduced in recent years including a focus on career development and equitable recruitment to support female staff to grow their careers at the British Red Cross.

We have also continued to invest in our pay strategy across the organisation, focusing on achieving parity within teams and against the market, particularly for our lower paid roles.

Constantly reassessing the pay gap

Although our gender pay gap is lower than many organisations, there can be no room for complacency.

We believe that we have a humanitarian, ethical and legal responsibility to celebrate and champion equality and diversity. Only by doing this can we truly embody our fundamental principles and values.

Our initial research into our ethnicity pay gap found that in April 2023, people from minoritised ethnic groups were paid more than those who are white.

However, when the statistics were broken down by ethnic group we found staff who are black/black British were paid 5.6% lower than those who are white. The overarching driver for this gap is the representation of people who are white in higher graded roles where pay on average is higher.

We are currently looking into how we can break these statistics down further to measure the pay gap for women from minoritised ethnic groups.

We will continue to work on initiatives to ensure our recruiting practices and career development are fair, inclusive and anti-racist.

*Medians give us a sense of the ‘typical’ situation as they are not distorted by very high or low hourly pay. However, they could fail to show where any gender pay gap issues might be most pronounced in the lowest paid or highest paid employees.

** Mean averages place the same value on every number they use, giving a good overall indication of the gender pay gap. But very high or low hourly pay can ‘dominate’ and distort the figure.