After sifting through the UK Government’s latest gender pay gap filings — which UK-based employers with more than 250 employees are obliged to report — it was uncovered that companies like Deliveroo and Checkout.com have pay gaps wider than the UK’s national average.

Specifically, in 15 of the 20 companies — including Revolut and Cazoo — Sifted found that women earned 90p or less for every £1 earned by men. Monzo, Starling Bank, Arrival, and LumiraDx are slightly higher at 90.7p, 90.8p, 92p, and 97.2p respectively, but pay parity is still elusive. Only one company out of the 20 — Octopus Energy — pays its female employees more than its male staff, at £1.06 to £1.

This data doesn’t automatically mean that a female developer, designer, or a woman serving in any other role at one of these tech companies is paid less than a man with the same job title, skills, and experience, however. Instead, the root cause of the gap here is suggested to be the lack of senior women.

The lack of women being employed in more senior (read: higher- and highest-paid roles) is a prominent concern when it comes to gender-related diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In Sifted’s analysis, when it comes to the percentage of women in the highest pay quartile at UK tech companies, Graphcore scored lowest out of the 20 firms, with women filling just one in 20 (5.7%) roles in the highest pay quartile. Octopus Energy was, again, at the other end of the spectrum, with women filling 55.5% roles in the highest pay quartile.

These findings aren’t entirely surprising: Over 2021-2022, and across the UK’s tech industry, 91.1% of companies paid male employees more than female staff overall. Further, only 23.5% of the top-paying jobs in tech were held by women.

Recommended

• Can a Scottish Crypto Help the Third Sector?
• UK Gov Provides £100m to Digitise Social Care
• Scots Gov Tech Partnership to Boost Health Innovation

Despite sustained cross-sector pushes for tech pay parity, the gender pay gap evidently still remains. In fact, seven of the tech companies analysed by Sifted reported a worse gender pay gap in 2023 compared to 2022.

As Sifted’s above analysis has highlighted — just as many other recent analyses, reports, and studies have done too — successfully tackling the ongoing gender pay gap requires multiple in-tandem solutions, especially in a largely-male industry like tech.

While one of the more frequently recommended suggestions is to hire and promote women into senior positions, increasing female representation in tech and encouraging women’s participation in the industry through programmes, initiatives, and educational improvements have also been advocated by many as solutions to assist with closing the pay gap.

The 20 tech companies analysed by Sifted include: Zopa Bank, Atom Bank, Improbable, Graphcore, Revolut, Deliveroo, Cinch, Checkout.com, CityFibre, Exscientia, Oxford Nanopore, CMR Surgical, Babylon, Immunocore, Cazoo, Monzo, Starling Bank, Arrival, LumiraDx, and Octopus Energy.