Northern School of Art defends International Women's Day tweet

The Northern School of Art has defended itself after its 43.6% gender pay gap was shared in response to its tweets on International Women's Day (IWD).

On Tuesday the Gender Pay Gap Bot retweeted firms that used IWD hashtags and exposed their gender pay gaps.

The account said women's median hourly pay at the college was 43.6% lower than men's, using data from the government's gender pay gap service.

The school said new data would show the median pay gap had fallen to 34.7%.

The Northern School of Art, based in central Middlesbrough, has not deleted its IWD tweets - unlike some other organisations after being retweeted - which celebrate some of its female students' work, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

This year, the International Women's Day theme was around breaking the biases held against women in communities, workplaces, schools, colleges, and universities.

A new multimillion-pound building located in Middlesbrough opened in September

"We are about to publish the data for 2020-21 which shows that we have made improvement in the median pay gap reducing it to 34.7%," a spokesperson said.

"We are clear - we do not have gender discrimination in pay. Men and women are paid exactly the same for the same job.

"Unlike some organisations we employ maintenance and catering staff directly (we do not use contractors) which automatically means that our gender pay gap can look greater."

The cover photograph on the pay gap Twitter account says: "Deeds not words. Stop posting platitudes. Start fixing the problem."

A new multimillion-pound college building opened in the town in September. The college, which dates back to 1970, also has two campuses in Hartlepool.

When comparing The Northern School of Art's average pay, women's mean hourly rate is 26.7% lower than men's.

The median hourly pay is the pay of the man or woman who is at the middle point when all of the salaries are ranked from highest to lowest, whereas the mean pay is the average when all of the male or female employees' salaries are added together and then divided by the number of employees.

Some of the worst offenders captured by the Twitter account included Young's pubs where women's median hourly pay was 73.2% lower than men and Ryanair where it was 68.6% less than men.

Since 2017, firms with 250 employees or more, have been required to annually report and publish details of their gender pay gap.

The BBC reported its median hourly pay for women was 6.2% lower than men's, and the mean was 6.3% lower.

The account also highlighted organisations which had an equal median hourly pay, including South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust and Northumberland County Council.

International Men's Day is on 19 November.