Asda’s Gender Pay Gap report – 35% of senior roles are occupied by women

Leeds-headquartered supermarket Asda has published its Gender Pay Report, which shows that 35% of people in senior roles are women.

The Big Four supermarket employs 149,000 people across the UK – 57% of which are women – and published the data in line with a Government requirement for large companies to do so by 4 April. For the 2017 Gender Pay Gap reporting period it shows that 35% of those occupying senior roles at Asda are women, whereas 70% of those in junior roles are women. Half of its graduate intake are women.

Asda’s senior vice president of people, Hayley Tatum, said: “Rates of pay and access to benefits and opportunities are the same at Asda, regardless of gender. Whilst our Gender Pay Gap is better than the national average we recognise that, like many businesses,  we have challenges when it comes to female representation in more senior roles – and that is something we’re committed to addressing.”

In its report, Asda outlines its commitments to closing the gap by supporting more women into senior roles. The supermarket says that it has already introduced flexible job design and unconscious bias training to ensure talented women are encouraged and enabled to progress into more senior roles.

A total of 86% of Asda staff work in hourly paid roles in stores, which have set base rates of pay. The median gender pay gap within that population, based on those rates alone, is 0% and the mean gender pay gap is 0.7%

The median pay difference between all men and women employed by Asda is 8.9%; the mean pay difference between all men and women employed by Asda is 12.5%.

Asda is also part of a global Women in Leadership programme supported by its parent company, Walmart, which looks at global best practice for supporting diversity and female progression.