We are committed to ensuring equality of opportunity, fairness of treatment, and work-life balance for all of our employees, and to offering an inclusive working environment in which our employees are able to make the best use of their skills and maximise their potential, free from discrimination. This is of crucial importance to our business. Entry into, and progression within, our Company is determined by the individual’s ability to do the job – it’s as simple as that.
Across our business we nevertheless employ significantly more women than men. This is not because we favour employing women over men. Rather, it is a reflection of the retail sector as a whole, where men are typically under-represented compared to women.
The gender pay gap shows the difference between the average earnings of women and the average earnings of men. It is expressed as a percentage of men’s earnings. For example, a gender pay gap of 15% means that, on average, the women earn 15% less than the men. A negative percentage means that, on average, the women earn more than the men.
It is important to understand that the gender pay gap differs from equal pay. Equal pay is about men and women receiving the same pay and conditions for doing equal work.
In contrast, the gender pay gap shows the difference between the average earnings of men across all job roles in an organisation and the average earnings of women across all job roles in that same organisation.
At Downtown we are confident that our gender pay gap is not a consequence of men and women who do the same job being paid differently. Rather, it is because of the structure of our workforce.
If equal pay is about pay, then the gender pay gap is about representation.
Of 23 internal promotions to management positions during the five trading years ending in January 2022, 19 (or 83%) of these were of women. This is greater than the percentage of women across our entire workforce, which was 70% as at the snapshot date of 5 April 2022.
It is noteworthy that a number of these internal promotions were to part-time management positions, which exemplifies our long-standing support for flexible working to boost the retention, development and progression of female talent within our business.
Dividing our workforce as at 5 April 2022 into four, equally-sized hourly pay quarters, the proportion of men and women in each of these quarters was as follows:
Our mean gender pay gap as at 5 April 2022 was 21.7%. As with previous years, the main reason for this was not a lack of female representation at senior levels but because men are under-represented in our lowest-paid roles, which is very typical of the retail sector.
Our median gender pay gap as at 5 April 2022 was 3.5%. Had we employed more men in lower-paid roles, it is likely that our median gender pay gap would have been 0%.
In addition to looking at hourly rates of pay, we have scrutinised the bonus payments made to our employees during the twelve months ending on 5 April 2022.
92.7% of our male employees as at 5 April 2022 have been classed as receiving a bonus payment during the preceding twelve months. The proportion of our female employees as at 5 April 2022 who have been classed as receiving a bonus payment during the same twelve- month period is slightly higher, at 93.4%.
Our mean bonus gender pay gap as at 5 April 2022 was -60.3%. This indicates that during the preceding year our female employees received, on average, almost two thirds more in bonus payments than our male employees.
Our median bonus gender pay gap as at 5 April 2022 was 0%.
The data shown in this report is accurate as of 5 April 2022. For further details of the calculations used, please see:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/gender-pay-gap-reporting-make-your-calculations
Our Gender Pay Gap Reports for previous years are available here:
The gender pay gap information for Oldrid & Co. Limited can also be found on the Government website at:
https://gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/Viewing/search-results
I hereby confirm that the data contained within this report is accurate.
Richard Broadhead
Managing Director
