Ladbrokes, Easyjet and Virgin Money are among the major companies to reveal gender pay gaps of more than 15% in favour of men for mean hourly pay.

Organisations with 250 or more workers must publish their figures by April and so far 527 firms have done so.

Women’s hourly pay rates is 52% lower than men’s at Easyjet, On average, women earn 15% less per hour at Ladbrokes and 33% less at Virgin Money.

All three firms say men and women are paid equally when in the same role.

At Easyjet, for example, 6% of its UK pilots are women – a role which pays £92,400 a year on average – whereas 69% of lower-paid cabin crew are women, with an average annual salary of £24,800.

The carrier said it had set a target that one in five of new entrant pilots should be female by 2020.

‘Weak representation’

The Ladbrokes Coral group put its gender pay gap largely down to “weak representation at our senior levels” and Virgin Money said it was “confident” men and women were paid equally for the same jobs.

The gender pay gap is distinct from equal pay, which is the difference in pay between a man and a woman who carry out the same or similar jobs.

In 2016, the UK gender pay gap was 9.4% for full-time workers, or 18.1% for all staff.

Employers of about half of the UK’s workforce will be affected by the reporting rules, which reveal discrepancies in pay and bonuses, with the results published on a government database.

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What we know so far

Companies have been publishing figures ad hoc ahead of the 6 April cut-off, including the BBC, which revealed women’s mean hourly rate was 10.7% lower.

The firm to publish the biggest gender pay gap so far is women’s fashion chain Phase Eight – with a 64.8% lower mean hourly rate for female staff.

Phase Eight’s chief executive Benjamin Barnett said the figure did not reflect the “true story” of the business, since most male employees worked in head office roles rather than in shops.

As of last April, 39 of Phase Eight’s 44 male employees worked in the corporate head office – where pay tends to be higher – which Mr Barnett said was likely to be the case at other women’s fashion retailers.