Senior women working in marketing and business development for professional service firms in the UK and Ireland are being paid an average of £20k less than their male counterparts, new research from the PM Forum indicates. The year’s PM Forum marketing salary benchmark shows a 20.5 per cent gender pay gap for directors and heads of marketing, suggesting women in top level positions are earning consistently less men performing a similar role. This gap comes despite being a largely female-dominated industry, with women representing more than 75 per cent of the professional services marketing workforce as a whole. In contrast, no gender pay gap exists between men and women at the most junior levels, with women being paid slightly more in marketing or BD assistant roles. 

Gender pay gap data

All UK organisations with 250 or more employees will have to publish their gender pay gap data by April 2018. The UK’s gender pay gap is currently estimated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to be 19.2 per cent, above the OECD average, with the UK ranked 21st out of the 33 countries. As well as a significant pay gap for women in senior positions, the survey also found that marketing salaries overall have increased by 2.7 per cent from the previous year, other than for marketing executives. UK marketing managers at non-global law firms bucked the trend to increase by 5.7 per cent (from £47.7k to £50.4k). The figures also show London-based marketers are paid 34 per cent more than those in UK regions, and 39 per cent of respondents believe themselves to be paid less than their peers with only seven per cent feeling that they are paid more.

Disparity

Nadia Cristina, co-founder and managing partner of PM Forum, said: 'While salaries have increased overall for most roles, these figures show we still have a long way to go to address gender parity for marketers at professional firms. With a pay gap higher than the national average, it is crucial that firmwide leaders commit to addressing this issue for their management professionals as well as their client-facing advisers. Only by investing in and appropriately rewarding all their people, regardless of gender, can firmwide leaders eliminate this unfortunate disparity.' The yearly review from the PM Forum was completed in January 2018 by more than 400 marketers in the UK and Ireland.