Gender pay gap highest in cricket and tennis

Cricket and tennis are the sports with the largest disparities between men's and women's pay, figures released by the Government have revealed.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) reported an average gender pay gap of 38%. This means for every £1 a man earns, a women earns just 62p.*

In their report, the ECB listed several key factors for the imbalance - such as the inclusion of the wages of centrally contracted England players in the figures.

They also cited the "historic trend towards employing ex-players in senior management, coaching and operational roles" and the fact that currently all first-class umpires in the domestic game are male.

In the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) women are paid an average of 31% less than men across the organisation - meaning for every £1 earned by a man, women earn 69p.

In their report they attributed their gap to, "a clear gender imbalance in our very senior roles at the top of our salary grades".

They also said, "men outnumber women in high performance sport-related roles" and "Davis Cup-related payments in 2016 which also affected our bonus gap".

Figures from the reporting period April 2016-17 indicated 87% of male employees received a bonus compared to 74% of female employees. This could be put down to the fact that the LTA do not award bonuses to part-time staff, and there are more female part-time employees than men.

The Football Association (FA) has an average gender pay gap of 23.2%. Their figures include senior England women's internationals, who are on central contracts, but not their male counterparts, who are paid by their clubs.

FA chairman Greg Clarke said: "The number of men applying for jobs at the FA is significantly higher than the number of women and so we are working hard to improve the pipeline in the early stages of recruitment to increase the possibility of hiring a more balanced workforce."

* All figures are a mean average. The mean average is calculated by adding all the salaries of an employer by gender and then dividing that sum by the number of salaries.