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CEO gender pay gap flags a problem for the sector
Our annual survey of chief executive salaries raises big questions about housing association pay gaps, writes Martin Hilditch
Inside Housing’s Inclusive Futures campaign aims to promote diversity and inclusion among housing’s leadership teams
Last week, we scrutinised our own coverage with a diversity audit of our articles as part of our Inclusive Futures campaign.
This week our gaze shifts back to the housing sector itself. And – not for the first time – our annual survey of chief executive salaries raises big questions about housing association pay gaps.
Our research found that female chief executives picked up an average of £163,559 in 2017/18. This compared with the £178,131 taken home by the male chief executives in our survey. The gap between female and male pay widened from 5% in 2016/17 to 8.2% in 2017/18. We were looking at the top 182 associations by size.
This isn’t a one-off. While the gap narrowed last year, the norm in recent years is typified by the headline ‘Gender gap widens’ in 2014.
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For the first time this year, we also looked at the pay gap between white and black and minority ethnic (BME) chief executives.
The average pay for BME chief executives was £153,814. Perhaps most telling is that only four of the 182 chiefs of the biggest housing associations identified as BME – just over 2%.
It’s not surprising, then, that Gina Amoh, chief executive of Inquilab Housing Association and chair of BME London, felt prompted to say that it is “difficult to call our sector inclusive, when these figures paint such a dispiriting picture”.
Inside Housing subscriber? Click here to access the full chief executive salary survey data
As things stand, it is certainly difficult to argue that much progress is being made on this front. When we audited our own content, we pledged that we would use the results as “the starting point in making change happen”. It would be nice to think that the figures this week will kick-start a similar conversation on housing association boards.
Previous research carried out by Inside Housing has revealed the under-representation of women at housing association board level.
Earlier this year we found that 36% of board members are women – and a survey by consultancy EMA later in the year came up with broadly the same figure (37%). In our survey, 50 board members out of 735 identified as BME – 6.8%. All of which raises fairly obvious questions about the extent to which t
This under-representation then feeds through into a variety of decisions, including pay and recruitment.
For a sector that prides itself more than most on its values, these are important questions to address and shouldn’t be shied away from.
Inside Housing will continue to examine all of this as part of the Inclusive Futures campaign. One key issue is the direction of travel.
"There has been more change at the top than normal"
A significant number of mergers in the past year or so and a noticeable number of retirements of long-standing chief executives means there has been more change at the top than normal.
In forthcoming weeks, Inside Housing will be taking a more detailed look at all this change to see if there is any sign of the sector rebalancing as a result.
Is the sector on the right track? Watch this space.
Martin Hilditch, managing editor, Inside Housing
The Inclusive Futures Summit
Inside Housing is launching the Inclusive Futures Summit
Our high-level summit will bring together respected people leaders and exemplars from the across sector and wider business to debate, discuss and learn how to embed diversity and inclusion in your organisations and harness the myriad benefits that this creates and to ensure that your workplace is reflective of the diverse communities you serve.
Themes being discussed include why being an inclusive organisation can help you be more successful, how to make inclusion visible in your organisation and the best approaches to encourage diversity at board level.
Discussions will also focus on how to future-proof your recruitment processes, promote inclusion through talent management, build working environments safe from prejudice and tackle unconscious bias.
The summit will take place on October 11 at the Emirates Old Trafford, Manchester.
