The gender pay gap: How do Premier League clubs compare?

March 8 marks International Women's Day, an opportunity to celebrate the progress made towards gender equality but also to highlight the work still to do.

Football is no different. A legacy of England's Women's European Championship win is the UK government's pledge to give girls equal access to sport in schools but The Athletic has also reported on the harassment regularly faced by female football fans.

One tangible measure of progress is the gender pay gap, which calculates the average difference in earnings between men and women. The Athletic has compared this data across Premier League clubs, on a day when many have been posting their support for International Women's Day on social media.

As of their most recent filings in April 2022, 16 of the 20 Premier League clubs have gender pay gaps in favour of men.

This is publicly accessible data, mandated by the UK government. Every British company that employs more than 250 people is obliged to report their salaries, with the overall pay gap then searchable on the government website. The Athletic, for example, does not employ enough people in the UK to be listed.

Under these regulations, companies must provide different points of data, each of which provides a different snapshot.

In the case of professional football, the median gender pay gap is the fairest calculation. This is the percentage between the hourly pay of the median man in a company, and the median woman — with the median the individual man or woman in the middle of a list ordered from highest to lowest paid.

Though the mean pay gap is often quoted, very high or low pay can distort the results — the median is considered to show the more 'typical' situation. In the Premier League, where the first-team men's squad is exceptionally well-paid, the median is a more appropriate measure.

The Athletic also contacted each Premier League club with a negative pay gap to ask if they wished to comment on the findings.

As pointed out by several smaller clubs, teams that employ fewer members of staff are at a slight disadvantage, with the first-team playing squad more likely to skew the median, which should be considered.

However, with a minimum listing size of 250 members, this will not lead to significant inaccuracies. Additionally, 10 Premier League clubs have taken the voluntary step of reporting their gender pay gap without first-team staff included, which provides a more accurate snapshot.

Overall, the median gender pay gap across Premier League clubs is 8.3 per cent — below the UK average of 9.7 per cent. Ten clubs exceed the national average.

Premier League gender pay gap 2021-22 TeamMedian pay gap %Pay gap % minus first-team staff Nottingham Forest33Not suppliedLeeds United27Not suppliedManchester City24.815.8Brentford234Crystal Palace22Not suppliedNewcastle United18.910.4Chelsea16.30Brighton & Hove Albion12.62.8Fulham12Not suppliedTottenham Hotspur10Not suppliedSouthampton9.6-1.6Liverpool8.83.1Wolverhampton Wanderers7.30Leicester City5.7Not suppliedAston Villa5Not suppliedManchester United4.2-0.3Everton00AFC Bournemouth-0.4Not suppliedArsenal-6.1Not suppliedWest Ham United-68Not supplied

Nottingham Forest have the largest gender pay gap

The club with the largest gender pay gap is Nottingham Forest — 33 per cent.

When those figures were released, a club statement read that while the club will “ensure their pay is equal where they undertake the same job… we cannot eliminate the gender pay gap completely due to our football management, coaching and playing jobs being filled by men”.

However, three Premier League clubs have a gender pay gap in favour of women, with a fourth, Everton, possessing no gender pay gap.

Forest subsequently told The Athletic their next report would demonstrate that the median gender pay gap has reduced to zero, allied with the club transitioning from a Championship to Premier League staff, elevating more women into prominent positions at the club.

The club said: “The data taken from 2021-22 reflects our time as a Championship club. Promotion to the Premier League necessitated considerable change and restructuring across the business and we are still transitioning.

“Women now make up an increasingly large proportion of the workforce at Nottingham Forest across all areas of the business, including the first-team support staff, medical and physiotherapy teams, and the senior leadership team.

“We are also proud that we committed to paying our staff at least the real living wage and this has been in place for the last 12 reporting months.

“Of all the progress we have made, however, our most significant achievement is that our gender pay gap data for 2022-23, which will be filed this month, demonstrates we have now achieved a median pay gap of zero per cent. This is something we are rightly proud of as we mark International Women's Day at Nottingham Forest.”

The other clubs with the largest median gender pay gaps are Leeds United (27 per cent) and Manchester City (24.8 per cent).

Forest, Leeds, and City all had larger pay gaps in 2021-22 than the previous year — with City previously possessing a pay gap in favour of women in 2020-21 (-1.2 per cent).

City say this significant change relates to matches in this period being played behind closed doors, with fewer casual staff; 32.3 per cent of the club's staff in the lowest-paid quartile are women, the fifth-highest number in the league, indicating that the majority of the league have more male casual matchday workers than City.

This season, Brentford (23 per cent) and Crystal Palace (22 per cent) also have high numbers but have improved since 2020-21.

However, Brentford also released figures excluding first-team staff, which sees the disparity fall to four per cent. Similarly, Chelsea, seventh on the list, have eliminated the gender pay gap under this metric.

Crystal Palace have not publicly shared figures that exclude first-team staff since 2019, but those older figures also show a non-existent pay gap.

West Ham's gender pay gap shows a large advantage for female staff

Four clubs — Everton, Bournemouth, Arsenal and West Ham — do not pay salaries skewed towards men.

Four further clubs — Chelsea, Wolves, Southampton, and Manchester United — have voluntarily released data that shows there is no pay gap in favour of men when first-team squad players are eliminated. Other clubs may also be in this group but have not released the information.

West Ham are a huge outlier, with a 68 per cent pay gap in favour of women, the largest gap in either direction. The club have women in key positions, such as vice-chair Karren Brady, executive director Tara Warren, and ticketing director Nicola Keye. Fifty per cent of Brady's direct reports are women.

Baroness Brady has been at West Ham since 2010 (Photo: Craig Mercer/MB Media/Getty Images)

Commenting on the findings last April, West Ham stated: “Categorically, men and women doing the same job are paid the same rate of pay.”

They also highlighted that “for the first time, there are more females than males paid bonuses at the club, and that both the mean and median bonus pay gaps are -367.23 per cent and -423.94 per cent respectively, which are significantly in favour of women.”

Another reason that such a large gap may exist is that West Ham employ relatively few women in their lowest hourly pay quartile, which would influence the median. Pay quartiles demonstrate female representation across different levels of the organisation.

For example, government data shows that Tottenham Hotspur (39 per cent) and Arsenal (21.6 per cent), their closest Premier League neighbours, employ notably more women in these positions than West Ham (16.7 per cent). West Ham's figure is the third-lowest in the league.

Who employs the fewest women in the upper pay quartile?

Pay quartiles are also useful for illustrating which clubs employ female staff in positions of responsibility.

For example, as of last year, Brentford had no women in the upper hourly pay quartile. Other clubs near the top of the list include Forest (2.8 per cent women in the upper quartile), Newcastle United, and Fulham (both five per cent).

It should be noted when assessing this data that there have been significant structural changes at many clubs since the government last requested the information.

For example, there has been major turnover at Forest since their promotion to the Premier League, while since their Saudi Arabia-led takeover, 40 per cent of Newcastle's board is now female.

Which clubs have improved the most?

Since the previous data set, 11 of 20 Premier League clubs have improved their gender pay gap in favour of women, with some making significant steps forward.

For example, Southampton had a gender pay gap in favour of men of 54.1 per cent in 2020-21, the highest in the league. That fell to 9.6 per cent in 2021-22, the 10th-best.

In their annual report, Southampton said they were “immensely proud” of this change, while acknowledging that the decrease in the median was affected by the “outsourcing of the conferencing and events activity”.

Other teams who saw their pay gap reduce significantly included Bournemouth (24.9 per cent to -0.4 per cent), Brentford (37 per cent to 23 per cent), Newcastle (32.9 per cent to 18.9 per cent), and Aston Villa (17.7 per cent to five per cent).

West Ham, whose pay gap was already in favour of women, fell significantly, from -6.4 per cent to -68 per cent.

The next set of data will be released in early April 2023.

(Top photos: Stock; design: Sam Richardson)