Gender pay gap: progress and ongoing commitment

Last updated 2 April 2026

Our gender pay gap results, measured in April 2025, are now published on the Gender Pay Gap Service website.

The median gender pay gap is 2.89% for April 2025, compared to -0.64% in 2024. This is the difference between the hourly pay of the man and the woman in the middle of a list of hourly pay ordered from highest to lowest paid.

The mean gender pay gap was 7.55% in April 2025, which is an increase of 2.9% on the previous year. 

We have seen a slight shift and an increase in our gender pay gap. While this is not in the direction we wish to see, we are committed to being transparent. We know that progress is not always linear and we will continue to focus on career development and equitable recruitment to support female staff to grow their careers at the British Red Cross. 

We have continued to invest in our pay strategy across the organisation, focusing on achieving parity within teams and against the market, particularly for our lower paid roles and we are committed to paying the Real Living Wage as a minimum.

Constantly reassessing the pay gap

Although our gender pay gap is lower than many organisations, there can be no room for complacency. 

We believe that we have a humanitarian, ethical and legal responsibility to champion equality and diversity. Only by doing this can we truly embody our fundamental principles and values.

Ethnicity pay reporting

We began reporting on our ethnicity pay gap voluntarily in 2023. Last year, we expanded our measures from our initial research to fully replicate the measures used for other pay gap reporting.

Our ethnicity pay gap continues to decrease overall. In April 2025, our overall mean pay gap was -2.1%, compared to 0.63% in 2024. Our overall median pay gap is -11.42%, compared to -10.06% in 2024.

We continue to drive initiatives to ensure our recruiting practices and career development are fair, inclusive and anti-racist.

Reporting methods

Our pay gap figures are reported as both median and mean numbers.

Medians give us a sense of the ‘typical’ situation as they are not distorted by very high or low hourly pay. However, they could fail to show where any gender pay gap issues might be most pronounced in the lowest paid or highest paid employees.

Mean averages place the same value on every number they use, giving a good overall indication of the gender pay gap. But very high or low hourly pay can ‘dominate’ and distort the figure.