Retail business Ann Summers has reported a mean gender pay gap for 2022 of 35.2%, and a median gap of 31%, higher than the mean national average of 17.1%.
Ann Summers’ mean bonus pay gap for 2022 was -168.6% in favour of women, and its median bonus gap stood at 16.7%. A total of 44% of women and 21% of men received bonus pay last year.
According to the business, its gender pay gap figures reflected the fact that it employs more women than men in store, and the hourly rate is lower than pay for its head office roles. The majority (98.9%) of roles in the lower pay quartiles were held by women in 2022, who held 70.9% of roles in the upper pay quartile, compared with just 29.1% of men.
Jacqueline Gold, chief executive officer of Ann Summers, said: “Through our diversity, equality and inclusion strategy, we are striving to support greater gender and cultural diversity as a business. It is therefore unfortunate that within the gender pay gap reporting framework we are only able to identify our staff through binary gender, and not how they choose to represent as individuals.
“The figures also appear to have stepped back dramatically on the years 2020 and 2021, which were heavily impacted by our retail store closures as a result of Covid. While our store employees were furloughed we were unable to account for them in our gender pay gap report, which has heavily skewed the data across that period.”
Ann Summers provides its workforce with a menopause policy, training and support, and supports the government’s Enough Campaign, which seeks to eradicate violence and abuse against women.
It also launched inclusive and family friendly policies last year to provide enhanced support, increased flexibility, and wellbeing to all staff irrespective of gender, and has been working in partnership with internal employee forums, Stonewall and Diversity in Retail to shape and deliver change.