Gender pay report and ethnicity pay gap reports

In response to the UK’s government’s requirement for all companies with over 250 employees to publish their gender pay gap data, Cancer Research UK today published its gender pay gap report. For the first time it has also publicly shared its ethnicity pay gap report. There isn’t currently a legal requirement to publish but the charity has taken the decision to be transparent and demonstrate its commitment to doing better.  The 2020 gender and ethnicity pay figures published are calculated on pay on our snapshot date, 5 April 2020.

Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK’s CEO, said: “I’m pleased to see that we’ve made progress in closing our gender pay gap again this year, with our mean gender pay decreasing year-on-year. We reached our target of 50% of women at the most senior levels, and I’m particularly pleased to see us take further steps towards gender parity in technology and to see how ahead we are of the national average in this area.  However, we clearly aren’t where we want to be on this; our median pay gap has increased from 23.3% in 2019 to 29.2% in 2020 which is influenced by the distribution of men and women across the charity in roles with different levels of pay.

“Our mean ethnicity pay gap is currently -9.5%, meaning ethnic minorities are paid on average 9.5% more than white employees.  The median (middle) ethnicity pay gap saw an increase from -22.3% in 2019 to -26.4% (-4.1) in 2020.  Whilst this may seem like positive news on the surface, we have a relatively small percentage of ethnic minority staff, and particularly at senior levels, so these numbers don’t tell the full story.

“We still have a lot more to do to improve diversity at Cancer Research UK, and particularly with regards to the representation and experience of ethnic minority staff. Our recently published Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy will be an important milestone for us as an organisation. We’re committed to changing, and our plan will keep us accountable for our progress and maintaining our momentum in reducing our pay gaps, as we move into an important new era for the charity, so that together we will beat cancer.”