THE gap in pay between men and women has continued to grow at Ceredigion County Council, new data reveals.

The news comes as the council insists it is “confident that men and women are paid equally for doing equivalent jobs”, despite women earning on average at least 7.8 per cent less than men.

The gender pay gap at the council – the difference between the mean or median hourly rate of pay that male and female colleagues receive – had grown to a mean pay gap of -7.8 per cent and a median pay gap of -10.4 per cent for 2022/23.

Those figures are up from -6.0 per cent and -7.6 per cent respectively in 2021/22.

The 2021/22 figures were themselves up from the previous year, where in 2020/21 the council recorded a mean pay gap of -5.3 per cent and median pay gap was -3.9 per cent.

The mean pay gap is the difference between average hourly earnings of men and women, while the median pay gap is the difference between the midpoints in the ranges of hourly earnings of men and women.

The median pay gap between men and women has now more than doubled in just two years.

After the 2021/22 figures were released showing an increase in the gap, Ceredigion County Council said it was “confident that men and women are paid equally for doing equivalent jobs across the council” and said “the main reason for our organisation-wide gender pay gap is an imbalance of male and female colleagues across the organisation”.­

The 2022/23 report on the council’s gender pay gap – put before cabinet members on 3 October – gave word for word the exact same reasoning fore the continuing widening gap.

The report added: “At the moment there are fewer women in senior roles than men, as well as a higher proportion of women relative to men in lower scales.”

The report shows that two thirds of the county council’s workforce are women.

Five women are employed as officers who earn more than £75,000 a year, with nine men in similar roles.

Of those 14 chief officers, the three highest paid roles – all above £100,000 a year – are all filled by men.

Almost 650 women employed by the council earn between £15,000 and £25,000, figures show.

Ceredigion County Council along with all listed public authorities in Wales is required to carry out Gender Pay Reporting under the Equality Act 2010

The report only includes centrally employed staff of Ceredigion County Council and does not include those staff (teachers and support staff) employed directly by school governing bodies.

In a bid to lower the pay gap, the report said that – among other initiatives – the council will “ensure that the language in job adverts is gender neutral” and “continue to deliver training to staff on ‘unconscious bias’, ensuring that managers understand what unconscious bias is and its impact on management decision making in the workplace.”