Bank of England pays male staff a quarter more than women

Male staff at the Bank of England are paid almost a quarter more than female employees, according to its latest gender pay gap report.

The median pay gap - based on the midpoints in the ranges of hourly earnings for men and women at the Bank - was 24.2% for the year to 30 March.

The Bank said it had taken steps to address the issue.

Governor Mark Carney was confident men and women were paid equally for doing the same jobs at the Bank.

"However, the greater proportion of men than women in senior roles creates a gender pay gap," he admitted.

"We are working hard to address this imbalance ... addressing the disparity in gender representation at senior levels will take time, but it will help close the current gender pay gap at the Bank."

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The median UK gender pay gap fell to 9.1% for the year to April for full-time workers, down from 9.4% for the previous 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The figure has almost halved since the ONS first started collecting figures on the gap in 1997.

The gender pay gap for the UK's financial sector stood at 35.6% - considerably higher than the Bank's figure.

The mean gender pay gap figure for Bank of England staff, which was based on average hourly earnings, was 21%.

Its gender bonus gap stood at 25.6% for the median figure, while the mean was 23.6%.

The mean gap for base pay has fallen from 22% in 2013 to 18.6% this year, the Bank's report said. That decline showed progress in making the Bank a more diverse organisation, it added.

Mr Carney said the proportion of women in senior roles at the Bank had risen from 20% in 2014 to 30% this year, and aimed to increase that figure to 35% by 2020.

Last month Nicky Morgan, who chairs the Treasury Committee, wrote to the chancellor asking for evidence about the efforts being made to encourage gender and ethnic diversity at the Bank of England.

She said the steps taken by the Bank to address its pay gap "seem to be on the right track, but we cannot be complacent".

The committee would continue to "keep a close eye" on organisations between now and the April 2018 deadline by which larger firms must report on their gender pay gap, Ms Morgan added.

Financial firms should be prepared to explain their gender pay gaps, she warned.

The Treasury Committee's concern followed two recent appointments to the Bank's rate-setting committee, which has left Silvana Tenreyro as the only woman on the Monetary Policy Committee.

Private and public sector employers, as well as charities with 250 or more employees, must publish their figures by April 2018 in an attempt to tackle workplace discrimination.

The data will eventually be available on a government database.