Despite the number of companies worldwide reporting their gender pay gaps increasing, little progress is being made to close these gaps.
This is the finding of a new Refinitiv report, The Gender Pay Gap and your Investment Strategies, which calls for more companies to disclose their efforts to close the gender pay gap.
The report analysed 1,400 financial services companies in Refinitiv’s ESG database, and found despite 748 companies disclosing gender pay gaps in the 2020, a 10% increase from 678 firms the year before, there is limited disclosure on how companies plan to close these gaps.
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The Refinitiv report adds to the plethora of evidence that gender-equal companies perform better by finding that in the FTSE All-World index with no pay gap outperforming those with a pay gap by 58% since 2016.
“Companies should disclose their efforts to close a gender wage gap,” the report said. “Such action demonstrates corporate values of fairness and equality and increases the likelihood the company will attract a diverse and talented workforce. Further, it increases the chance the workforce will work efficiently together and dissipates the risk of legal action on equal pay/discrimination claims.”
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David Craig, group head, data and analytics, CEO Refinitiv, LSEG, said: “Though we continue to see more companies disclosing gender pay gap data in 2020, both disclosure and performance have a long way to go before we see the gender pay gap vanishing. Our ESG data and research show that closing the gender pay gap is not idealistic, nor is it a nice to have, it is a business imperative for companies of all sizes and geographies.”
The London Stock Exchange Group, which owns Refinitiv, had a mean gender pay gap of 27% in 2018 and 23% in 2019.
