BARNSLEY Council’s gender pay gap stands at more than eight per cent across its workforce which is mostly female.
A report to the council’s ruling cabinet says 68.3 per cent of council staff are female, but the average hourly rate of female staff is £11.14 compared to £12.72 for men - an imbalance of 8.1 per cent.
The proportion of women is even higher when looking at just the lower-graded roles - 76.2 per cent - but at senior management level the split is exactly equal, with 51 men and 51 women.
Chief executive Diana Terris said: “We recognise that like many other employers we have a gender pay gap. We are confident that men and women are paid equally for doing the same job.
“However, like other public sector organisations we employ a greater proportion of women than men in our workforce and in lower graded roles.
“To start to address this issue we have introduced the Foundation Living Wage to increase salaries of the lowest paid and we have a robust action plan in place which identifies what we are going to do to tackle the gender pay gap.
“We acknowledge that while ever we have a gender pay gap we have work to do and as a council we are fully committed to address this imbalance.”
