Official government data released on the gender wage gap has painted the UK games industry in a poor light, falling well below national averages and medians in terms of equality. While the data is distinctly lacking in many areas, it does highlight clear patterns within the games industry. The dataset includes information on median and means wage gaps, the difference in bonus pay, and the ratios of women working within different levels of the company. However, as only companies with 250 more UK staff were legally required to submit data, there are several notable omissions including Activision, Ubisoft, Ninja Theory, Nintendo UK, Sega, and Playground Games. Even so, it offers a newfound level of transparency into the issues of equality in the modern British workplace, a move that was welcomed by UKIE CEO Dr Jo Twist. “Importantly, businesses now need to be proactive and ensure they are taking the right steps in their policies and approaches so they can create the best opportunities for people and therefore an inclusive and diverse workforce, especially in senior leadership and management roles,” she told to GamesIndustry.biz.
It is important to note that the data is not detailed enough to provide an examination of equal pay for equal work. However, it does demonstrate how much fewer women earn on average in the British workplace and in the games industry in particular. According to the data, the games industry has a median gender wage gap of 15.3%, compared to a national median of 9.7%. Companies, where this disparity was most pronounced, were Sumo Digital (34.5%), Rockstar (31.8%), and Codemasters (27.9%). Inspired Gaming was the only company to actually pay women more than men (1%) while GAME and Namco boasted a 0% wage gap. The only other companies to come in under the national median were PlayNation (5.9%) and Microsoft (8.4%).
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Companies Data
Several companies have responded to the data already. In a statement, Jagex said it “recognises the importance of a diverse workforce” and was aware that its wage gap was above the national median. “However, this is not due to a pay equality issue, but as with the wider games industry, we have a lack of female representation in some disciplines across the studio, including leadership and STEM roles,” the studio said. TIGA CEO Dr Richard Wilson also highlighted the lack of women in STEM roles as a major issue facing the industry. “We need to increase the supply of female students studying STEM subjects so that there is a larger potential pool of people which games businesses can recruit from. We also need to encourage more applications by women to work in our industry,” he said. “We additionally need to retain and promote skilled women in our sector.” Electronic Arts, which has better gender representation in the four pay quartiles than industry average despite remaining well below the national average, said it has made “significant strides” in reaching a more balanced representation. The publishing giant noted that the proportion of men and women receiving bonuses was comparable at 82% and 81% respectively. However, as demonstrated in the above chart, women earn only 55p to every £1 a man receives in bonuses, which is 11p below the industry average.
Rockstar Second Highest Median Wage Disparity
Rockstar, which was the second-highest for median wage disparity, had the largest gap in bonus pay and came well below the industry average for representation in all four quartiles. “While our male and female employees are fairly compensated based on merit and without reference to gender, our gender pay gap is driven primarily by the structure of our workforce, with longer-tenured employees who are predominantly male occupying our most senior roles,” said studio director Andrew Semple. “We are dedicated to continuing to build a representative gender balance across all our studio activities, and pledge to continue to find new ways to support and encourage women to both take-up and advance in career opportunities in game developer in order to achieve that.”
Conclusion
Ultimately, the wage gap data paints a damning picture of gender equality in the games industry, especially in relation to the rest of the UK. It is important to reiterate that while the data gives us no indication regarding equal pay for equal work, it does demonstrate a severe lack of women working at all levels of the industry. Sharing her thoughts with GamesIndustry.biz, Wonderstruck game artist Jess Hyland noted that gender wage gap statistics lead only to more questions.
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