The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today launched a new guide for employers to increase the number of women in leadership roles and address the gender pay gap.

On the day Sadiq publishes City Hall’s third gender pay gap report, he has also released the ‘Our Time: Supporting future leaders’ toolkit to help employers across the city to introduce his gender equality initiative in their workplaces

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “As Mayor, I am determined to do everything in my power to address the gender pay gap that has existed unchallenged and hidden away for far too long. 

“The data we have published today paints a varied picture.  It does not make for comfortable reading but if we are to correct this injustice we must continue to highlight the gaps and the need for action.

“That is exactly why we are also publishing the ‘Our Time’ toolkit today – schemes like this have been proven to support more women into senior leadership roles and to help bridge the gender pay gap. We’ve collated what we’ve learned and created an all-encompassing action plan so that employers across the city can follow suit. It is shameful that in 2018 women remain under-represented at all levels of government and leadership roles – I want to encourage all industries across the capital to commit to addressing the shocking imbalance we still see in positions of power today through adopting ‘Our Time’. 

“Last year, we marked the one hundredth anniversary of women being able to cast their vote in a general election – moving forwards, let’s honour this historic milestone by taking bold action to remove the barriers to women’s success and ensure that our capital is a shining light in the fight for gender equality.”

One key factor behind the gender pay gap is a lack of women in senior jobs. The new Our Time toolkit works as a step-by-step guide for employers to learn from the approach taken at City Hall to increase the number of women in leadership roles. The toolkit is a comprehensive package of materials which covers advocating for the introduction of the scheme right through to training materials and evaluating the success of the programme.

The Our Time programme was launch by the Mayor in May 2018 and has been up and running across the GLA group – TfL, LFB, MOPAC, LLDC, OPDC, the GLA and the Metropolitan Police –  since September 2018. Since then public and private sector organisations – including Waltham Forest Council, Lambeth Council, Croydon Council, Westfield Unibail Rodamco, Crossrail, Lloyds of London and Metropolitan Thames Valley – have already committed to introducing it in their workplaces. In addition, more than 850 people had signed up for updates on Our Time since it was launched.

The gender pay gap at City Hall has fallen from 6.14 per cent to 4.82 per cent during the last year. However, data published today paints a varied picture when it comes to tackling the gender pay gap across the functional bodies of the GLA. While there has been a modest improvement at the core GLA and Metropolitan Police, the gap has widened slightly at TfL.  Three of the seven GLA Group organisations have a negative pay gap, that is, women are on average paid more than men.