Exploring The Gender Pay Gap in Strategic Suppliers To Government

From our report, Procuring Inequality, the disparity in the gender pay gap is stark when looking at the strategic suppliers to the Government. Strategic suppliers are those organisations that the government’s Crown Commercial Service function has identified as critical to the delivery of public services.

Because the stability of these supplier companies could affect the delivery of the Government services, these suppliers are tasked with additional reporting requirements and given a ‘Crown Representative’, who liaises with the company to ensure that contracts are delivered effectively.

We took the most recent pay gap reporting for companies from this supplier group who have won contracts between 2017 and 2020. We’ve then calculated the average pay gap for each supplier.

We found across all of the strategic suppliers, there was an average median pay gap of 17.72%, demonstrating that these critical suppliers have a greater gender pay gap than the national average, (6.2% more) and a greater average than the rest of the companies trading with the public sector (5.22% more).

Both Sopra Steria and PWC have maintained an average pay disparity of more than 30% in favour of men. Thirteen strategic suppliers have a median pay bias towards men of more than 20% and across all strategic suppliers, the average median pay bias towards men is 17.72%. The bulk of strategic suppliers’ pay gap is around the 10-20% mark. At the extreme end, six strategic suppliers have a pay gap bias of over 25%.

What is most striking is the clear differential between similar suppliers, for instance, PWC reports a gender pay gap that is more than double that of Deloitte. Vodafone reports a gender pay gap that is double that of BT.

Undoubtedly some of the pay gaps are linked to the type of work being done, but it is clear that at some level this is down to the individual hiring and compensation decisions within the companies. We hope to see these organisations that benefit from public funds, actively addressing these pay gaps figures.

If you’d like to talk to us further about this research or our government procurement data capabilities, please, get in touch.