Our gender and ethnicity pay gaps – why they exist and what we’re doing about them

At Cancer Research UK, we’re committed to becoming a more inclusive and diverse workplace where all our people feel they can belong and thrive. This is key to helping us beat cancer, and beat it for everyone.

These are priorities highlighted in our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy and we welcome the opportunity to be transparent about the progress we’re making and where further action is required. You can read my latest update on our EDI strategy here.

Today we’re publishing our gender and ethnicity pay gaps for the reporting period of April 2022 to April 2023. These pay gaps are not the same as equal pay. We’re confident that we pay everyone equally for doing like-for-like work across the charity and that we make fair and consistent decisions on pay.

Gender pay gap

The gender pay gap is the difference in average pay between all female staff and male staff. Our mean gender pay gap is 16.7%, down from 18.3% in 2022, and our median gender pay gap is 21.1%, down from 27.6% in 2022.

It’s encouraging to see another year of improvement. We’re also continuing to meet our target of at least 50% of Executive Board or Director levels held by female staff. That said, our gender pay gap is still higher than we want it to be and continues to be, driven by the overall shape and distribution of  female (76%) and male (24%) staff across the charity.

The reduction in our mean gender pay gap over the last 12 months is largely due to the action we’ve taken on pay since 2022. In June 2022 we implemented a 3.5% annual salary review for eligible staff and there was a 9.7% increase to the National Living Wage in April 2023.

Retail staff in our shops make up more than half of our organisation and we employ far more female (80%) than male staff (20%) in retail roles, as is typical of the sector in the UK. Market factors influencing pay for retail compared with non-retail roles are different, with retail generally being a lower paid sector with little variance in pay between roles. This continues to have the greatest impact when we compare the average hourly rates of female and male staff.

We’ve followed through on our commitment to interrogate our data in more detail, splitting out our gender pay gaps by retail and non-retail staff to better understand them. Our retail results are encouraging – our mean is –0.8% and our median is –1.9%, in favour of female staff.

Ethnicity pay gap

While publishing our ethnicity pay gap report is not a legal requirement, we welcome the opportunity to demonstrate how we’re progressing on our journey to be a more diverse and inclusive organisation.

The ethnicity pay gap is calculated by comparing the average pay of White employees and other ethnic minority staff. Our mean ethnicity pay gap is –5.0%, compared with –5.9% in 2022, and our median ethnicity pay gap is –15.3%, reduced from –23.3% in 2022. This means that staff from an ethnic minority background are paid on average more than White employees. While it’s encouraging that these have narrowed again and despite remaining in favour of ethnic minority employees, it’s only one indicator of the experience of our people and is based on small numbers.

There are two main factors influencing our ethnicity pay gap – the low numbers of ethnic minority staff employed across all levels and roles in the charity, and the lower proportion of ethnic minority staff employed in our shops.

By the end of 2023, 15.3% of our workforce were from an ethnic minority background, just short of our target of 16% - set when census data showed that the proportion of people in England and Wales from ethnic minorities was 14%. It’s now at 18.3%, so we know we still have work to do to improve.

What we are doing 

By continuing to ensure that our people are paid equal pay for equal work, encompassing people from different backgrounds and perspectives at all levels and having a culture of inclusion, we believe we can make the greatest progress for people with cancer and their loved ones.

Since publishing last year’s pay gap data, we’ve made further changes to the way we recruit, introducing new inclusive recruitment workshops for hiring managers. This builds upon improvements made in previous years, such as introducing anonymous CVs and rewriting job advertisements with a focus on accessibility and inclusivity. You can find out more about the actions we’re taking to close our pay gaps in our reports.

We’ll continue to monitor our pay gap data carefully and engage with colleagues across the charity to identify opportunities for action. We’ll strive to maintain our target of 50% of leadership roles being held by female staff, and see at least 12% of our Executive Board, Director and Head roles held by people from ethnic minority backgrounds. The latter is taking longer than we’d hoped, but we remain committed.

In November 2023, we launched a second round of Ignite, our leadership development programme aimed at high potential staff from ethnic minority backgrounds. 42% of the first cohort still working at Cancer Research UK achieved a promotion or lateral move after.

We’re also evaluating our 2021-2023 EDI strategy and will outline our new ambitions as we refresh our long-term EDI strategy later in 2024.