Rust pledges action on equality as BHA reveals gender pay gap of 16 per cent

The BHA has revealed a mean gender pay gap of 16 per cent, which sits just below the national average of 18.4 per cent.

By comparison the Football Association has a pay gap of 23 per cent, while the Lawn Tennis Association has one of 31 per cent. Jockey Club Racecourses has a pay gap of just three per cent.

The BHA's mean bonus pay gap is 66 per cent. This is said to primarily be a result of a performance-related incentive plan at executive level, which, at the time of the survey, had a composition of 70 per cent male and 30 per cent female. The median bonus pay gap is 33 per cent.

BHA chief executive Nick Rust has said there is an ongoing effort to attract more women into the organisation at managerial levels.

In the BHA's report, Rust said: "The BHA's gender pay gap is primarily owing to the fact that there are fewer women in senior management positions and senior raceday roles and a relative concentration of women in the lowest pay quartile.

"We must therefore ensure that we create the right environment and pathways for men and women to progress within the organisation and that we have a formal succession planning process in place along with increased investment in training and development of our staff.

"My executive team and I have recently begun a programme of unconscious bias training that will be undertaken by the BHA's senior management and those responsible for the recruitment and development of staff at the BHA.

"We're committed to attracting more women into the organisation at managerial levels and to traditionally male-dominated roles and teams."

Rust also revealed that an audit of the BHA's recruitment process will be undertaken.

He added: "We're conducting an audit of our recruitment practices to ensure we are advertising and filling job vacancies to best practice and meeting our diversity and inclusion objectives. This will include introducing anonymous application to eliminate unconscious bias at the shortlisting stage."

British companies with 250 or more employees are now required by law to reveal their gender pay gap data, with the deadline for release set at March 30 for public bodies and April 4 for companies.

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