A wider issue

Airlines stress aviation is historically male dominated, but the gap remains indicative of the fact men dominate senior, better paid roles in travel – not just at airlines where cabin crew often earn just a quarter of pilots’ pay.

Just eight of Ryanair’s 554 highly paid pilots are female (1.5%), yet 69% of its 586 lower-paid cabin crew are female.

British Airways is among the most balanced – its lower, lower-middle and upper-middle pay quartiles range from just 1% to 5% in favour of men, although this jumps to 16% in its upper quartile.

EasyJet, which has been publishing gender pay data since 2015, has nearly 1,500 pilots (average salary £92,400) – 86 female and 1,407 male. By comparison, its 2,900 cabin staff (average salary £24,800) is 69% female (2,002).

Brian Strutton, general secretary of the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), told TTG the figures, albeit skewed by pilot pay, highlighted “without doubt” the “tremendously low” number of female pilots in the UK (5%) – and raised questions about barriers preventing women entering the profession.

“Balpa believes a significant reason for the low number of female pilots is the lack of visible role models and encouragement from a young age,” he said. “We’d like to see schools and companies do more to highlight traditionally male-dominated roles as career options to young girls.

“In recent years, we’ve seen airlines take a more proactive approach to encouraging more women into the profession, including Thomas Cook and easyJet. We have been particularly pleased to see easyJet take current female pilots to [speak at] Girlguiding UK.”

Thomas Cook Airlines last month launched a partnership with Flight Training Europe in Jerez, Spain, specifically for female pilots, who can apply for a €30,000 scholarship while easyJet’s Amy Johnson initiative, launched in 2015, aims to ensure that by 2020, one-fifth of all new entrant pilots are female.

Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays, meanwhile, says by 2022 it will achieve a 50-50 male-female balance in leadership roles and aims to have at least one woman for every four shortlisted applicants for engineering roles, and one in every 10 pilot roles.

Away from aviation, a similar pattern persists for senior roles across some of the UK’s largest travel companies. Tui employs 12,040 people in the UK (71% female) and Thomas Cook around 9,000 (73% female).

However, Cook’s senior management team is just 37% female and its board 36%, while Tui UK, which comprises the majority of the business’s managers and its executive board, pays men 31% more on average.

Gender balance in retail

Looking in isolation at the two groups’ retail arms, both are female dominated (93%), yet Cook’s average pay is still 13.8% higher for men, and Tui 10% higher.

Tui, which has 620 stores, said high street advisor roles were of “particular interest” to women due to the flexible nature of work, with 60% working part-time. It has also pledged to address gender balance in senior management and Stem roles (science, technology, engineering and maths).

Cook, which has more than 600 stores, has published its own five-point plan, including introducing gender diversity targets and running a second women’s sponsorship programme.

Elsewhere, Barrhead Travel’s average gender pay gap is 13.9%, but this falls to just 1.4% across its retail division of more than 35 stores.

Barrhead’s senior management team (67% female) and directors (70%) closely reflects the business as a whole, which is 77% female.

Sharon Munro, Barrhead’s president, said: “We’re confident men and women across Barrhead are paid equally for doing the same job. We are proud 67% of management are women, which reflects concerted efforts to develop and support our workforce. I’m a strong believer in nurturing our grass roots talent, irrespective of gender.”

Like Barrhead, Hays Travel is overwhelmingly female (85%) and has an average gender pay gap of 18%. It has a “significantly larger” proportion of women in its retail network, whose pay is supplemented by sales incentives and bonus pay. Three out of five Hays board members are women, as well as 19 of its 24 senior leaders.

At Kuoni (78% female), the average gender pay gap is 27.2% with 83% of retail staff female. Its senior management team is 50% female and leadership team 58% female.

Kuoni said more than 110 managers and senior executives have now attended “coaching conversations” workshops and that the company has partnered with everywoman.

Dawson & Sanderson (82% female) was the one major firm to achieve pay parity across its 259 staff (23 agencies), reporting a 0% gender pay gap.

Gill said everywoman expected the obligation to report gender pay to “positively affect” female staff. She is now urging firms to embrace transparency, implement action plans for change and address learning and development requirements to reduce the skill gaps holding women back.

Difference between mean and median pay gaps

The mean gender pay gap
The difference between the average pay of all male employees and the average pay of all female employees.

The median gender pay gap
The difference between the middle employee in the range of male pay and the middle employee in the range of female pay.

Average gender pay gap per hourly pay highlighting the mean/median gaps as a deficit to women (April 2018)