Microsoft’s female UK staff are paid on average seven percent less than their male counterparts, which is depressingly better than the rest of the overall workforce.
The government’s Gender Pay Gap report legislation, enacted last year, requires all firms with over 250 employees to disclose their pay gaps and Vole revealed that the mean hourly pay of its female staff is 6.55 percent lower than its male staff. The median figure stands at 8.42 per cent.
Although this sounds pretty bad, the overall gap in the UK national workforce is 17 percent. Vole also has significantly lower pay discrepancies than the rest of the UK.
In its gender pay gap report, Microsoft revealed that 26.5 percent of its UK workforce is female.
However, that percentage falls to 18.2 percent for technical roles and 22.9 percent among its leadership team. The bonuses Microsoft gave its female employees last year also trailed those handed to males by 11.22 percent.
Vole said that the reason there is any difference is probably due to having more men in its senior echelons but also highlighted the worrying lack of females choosing to study IT.
“To be successful in reducing the gender pay gap, we need to acknowledge the industry-wide challenge we face for available skills,” the report stated. This year, the number of female IT graduates in the UK dropped from 16 percent in 2016 to 15 percent in 2017, with a similarly disappointing picture of just 14 percent female graduates in Engineering and Technology. In 2017, just 10 percent of the entrants for A-level computing were female.
“This, combined with an industry average of 26 per cent female representation in the technology industry workforce, indicates a clear need to invest further in the future skills, talent and leadership pipeline for our industry.”
Microsoft is running a DigiGirlz programme, which is designed to provide secondary school girls with a better understanding of what a career in technology is all about by inviting them to spend a day at our UK headquarters.
Microsoft’s UK Boss Cindy Rose said that throughout her career, she had been a passionate advocate for women in the workplace.
“This is an issue of critical importance to me and to Microsoft. And, while I’m encouraged by the progress we are making on gender equality and representation, we still have a long way to go. We can always do more, and I feel the urgency to do so.”
