Pay gap reports

A photo of a person smiling inside a CRUK charity shop

At Cancer research UK, we exist to beat cancer by working together. We’re committed to becoming a more inclusive and diverse charity. By welcoming people from different backgrounds and perspectives at all levels and fostering a culture of inclusion, we believe we can make the greatest progress for people with cancer and their loved ones.

Download the gender pay gap report 2023

Download the ethnicity pay gap report 2023

We’re confident that we pay everyone equally for doing like-for-like work across the charity and operate several practices across the entire employee lifecycle to ensure fair and consistent decisions on pay. We welcome the opportunity to share our gender and ethnicity pay gaps, the reasons for them and the actions we are taking to reduce them and improve inclusion at Cancer Research UK.

Michelle Mitchell, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK

What is the difference between equal pay and gender and ethnicity pay gap?

Equal pay is the requirement to pay all staff, regardless of their gender or ethnicity, equally for equal work. We’re confident we do this.

Equal pay forms part of the 2010 Equality Act. The act prohibits discrimination on grounds of race and gender and other protected characteristics, and requires people who are female and male, or White of from an ethnic minority background being paid the same for like/similar work. At Cancer Research UK, we apply our grading framework and pay guidelines consistently and are confident that pay is set fairly for similar roles across the charity.

Gender pay gap reporting is a comparison between average hourly rates of pay for female and male staff, regardless of the work they perform. There is a UK Government requirement for all companies with over 250 employees to publish their gender pay gap data.

Ethnicity pay gap reporting is a comparison between average hourly rates of pay of ethnic minority and White staff, regardless of the work they perform. Ethnicity pay gap reporting isn’t a legal requirement, but we welcome the opportunity to be open and transparent.

The 2023 gender and ethnicity pay figures are calculated on data available on our reporting date, 5 April 2023.

Gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting: our methodology

For both gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting, we follow the same methodology. We calculate the mean and median gap in hourly pay.

Gender

Mean (average) gender pay gap: To calculate the mean hourly pay for female staff, the hourly pay for all female staff is added together and divided by the total number of female staff. The same is done for male staff. The mean gender pay gap is the difference (shown as a percentage) between the mean hourly pay for female and male staff.
Median (middle) gender pay gap: If all female employees were lined up in order of their hourly pay, and so were all male employees, the median would be the hourly rate of pay of the individual female and male employee in the middle of each line. The median gender pay gap is the difference (shown as a percentage) between the hourly pay of the middle female employee compared to the middle male employee.

Ethnicity

Mean (average) ethnicity pay gap: To calculate the mean hourly pay for ethnic minority staff, the hourly pay for all ethnic minority staff is added together and divided by the total number of ethnic minority staff. The same is done for White staff. The mean ethnicity pay gap is the difference (shown as a percentage) between the mean hourly pay for ethnic minority and White staff.
Median (middle) ethnicity pay gap: If all ethnic minority employees were lined up in order of their hourly pay, and so were all White employees, the median would be the hourly rate of pay of the individual ethnic minority and White employee in the middle of each line. The median ethnicity pay gap is the difference (shown as a percentage) between the hourly pay of the middle ethnic minority employee compared to the middle White employee.

What are the reasons for our gender and ethnicity pay gaps?

Gender

Our mean (average) gender pay gap has reduced from 18.3% in 2022 to 16.7% in 2023, and our median (middle) gender pay gap has reduced from 27.6% to 21.1%.
It’s encouraging that the 2023 results show another year of improvement, though the gender pay gap remains higher than the charity would want it to be. Our gender pay gap remains affected by the overall shape and distribution of female and male staff working across the charity, which hasn’t changed much since last year. Staff in our shops continue to make up more than half of our workforce and we employ far more female than male staff in retail roles, which is typical of the retail sector in the UK. It’s a lower paid sector, which continues to have the greatest impact when we compare the average hourly rates of female and male staff.

Ethnicity

Our mean ethnicity pay gap has reduced from -5.9% in 2022 to –5.0% in 2023, and our median ethnicity pay gap has reduced from –23.3% in 2022 to –15.3%.
There are two main factors influencing our ethnicity pay gap – the low numbers of ethnic minority staff employed across all levels and roles in the charity, and the lower proportion of ethnic minority staff employed in our shops. While it’s encouraging that our ethnicity pay gap has narrowed again, it’s only one indicator of the experience of our people and is based on small numbers. By the end of 2023, 15.3% of our workforce were from an ethnic minority background, just short of our target of 16% - set when census data showed that the proportion of people in England and Wales from ethnic minorities was 14%. It’s now at 18.3%, so we know we still have work to do to improve.

What are we doing to narrow the gender and ethnicity pay gap and increase diversity and inclusion?

We’re confident we pay everyone equally for doing like-for-like work. And as a large charity with a wide range of different roles and skills, we aim to reward all our people fairly and as competitively as we can based on the external market, while balancing our need to continue funding our research. It's only by continuing to ensure that our people are paid equal pay for equal work, encompassing people from different backgrounds and perspectives at all levels and fostering a culture of inclusion, that we will make the greatest progress for people with cancer and their loved ones.

We’ve made further changes to the way we recruit since publishing our last year’s pay gap, introducing new inclusive recruitment workshops for hiring managers. This builds upon improvements made in previous years, such as introducing anonymous CVs and rewriting job advertisements with a focus on accessibility and inclusivity.

Going forward, we’ll continue to monitor our pay gap data carefully and engage with colleagues across the charity to identify opportunities for action. We’ll strive to maintain our target of 50% of leadership roles being held by female staff, and see at least 12% of our Executive Board, Director and Head roles held by people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Read more in our 2023 gender and ethnicity pay gap reports.

Read the gender pay gap report 2023

Read the ethnicity pay gap report 2023

Past reports

Download our past gender and ethnicity reports.

Gender

Gender pay gap report 2022
Gender pay gap report 2021
Gender pay gap report 2020
Gender pay gap report 2019
Gender pay gap report 2018

Ethnicity

Ethnicity pay gap report 2022
Ethnicity pay gap report 2021
Ethnicity pay gap report 2020

Contact us

For more information about our pay gap reporting, alternative document formats of our reports or answers to any questions you may have, get in touch with us.

Email the Inclusion and Wellbeing team