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Is the UK media industry good for women? Pay gap data 2026

Published 26 August 2026, last reviewed 29 August 2026

Media is one of the few UK industries where women are not in short supply. Newsrooms, production companies, magazine titles and agencies are full of them, often in the majority. That makes the media gender pay gap harder to explain away than in engineering or construction, where employers can at least point at the pipeline.

The honest answer to “is media good for women?” is that it is a good industry to get into and a difficult one to get to the top of. The published data shows exactly where that turn happens.

What the media gender pay gap looks like in 2026

Every UK employer with 250 or more staff must publish six gender pay gap figures each year under the Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations 2017. The most recent complete set covers the 2025 to 2026 reporting year, with a snapshot date of 5 April 2025 for private employers and 31 March 2025 for public bodies. All of it is free to search on the government’s Gender pay gap service.

We took the full published dataset and grouped employers by the SIC codes they register under for publishing, film and television production, broadcasting, news agencies and advertising. That gives 212 media employers. Here is how they sit.

• The median gap across those 212 media employers was 11.9%.
• Across all 11,183 employers who reported, the median was 8.0%.
• Narrowing to newspaper and magazine publishers, the median rose to 15.5%.
• Among broadcasters, the median was 11.3%.

For national context, the Office for National Statistics put the UK gender pay gap at 6.9% for full-time employees and 12.8% across all employees in April 2025.

So media sits meaningfully above the employer-level norm, and print publishing sits higher still. That is not a rounding error.

The quartile figures tell the real story

The headline percentage is the least interesting number in a pay gap report. The quartile figures are where the shape of an industry shows up, because they tell you what proportion of women sit in each quarter of the payroll.

Across those 212 media employers, women were a median 59.0% of the lowest-paid quartile and a median 41.3% of the highest-paid quartile.

Read that twice. Media does not have a shortage of women. It has a distribution problem. Women are the majority of the people earning least and the minority of the people earning most, inside the same organisations.

That pattern is worth remembering when a media employer tells you it is committed to gender balance. It probably is balanced, on headcount. Our guide to reading a company’s gender pay gap figures explains how to pull the quartiles out of any report in about two minutes.

What the biggest UK media employers reported

These are median hourly pay gaps for the 2025 to 2026 reporting year, with the proportion of women in each employer’s top pay quartile in brackets. A positive figure means men’s median hourly pay was higher.

• ITV Studios Limited: 2.8% (57.0% women in the top quartile)
• Guardian News & Media Limited: 6.8% (43%)
• ITV Broadcasting Limited: 6.8% (47.1%)
• British Broadcasting Corporation: 7.6% (42.8%)
• Global Media Group Services Limited: 10.4% (41.7%)
• Bauer Radio Limited: 10.9% (44.4%)
• Sky UK Limited: 11.2% (33%)
• The Financial Times Limited: 11.7% (48.5%)
• Telegraph Media Group Holdings Limited: 11.9% (42%)
• Independent Digital News and Media Limited: 14.7% (36.8%)
• News UK & Ireland Limited: 15.1% (44.2%)
• Immediate Media Company Limited: 17.0% (47%)
• The Economist Newspaper Limited: 17.2% (38.5%)
• Associated Newspapers Limited: 17.5% (34.7%)
• Condé Nast Publications Limited: 19.6% (59.8%)
• Channel Four Television Corporation: 27.3% (50%)

Two health warnings before you use that list. First, these are individual legal entities, not whole groups. Large broadcasters report through several separate companies, so one entity is a partial view of the organisation you would actually join. Second, a low gap is not the same as good pay. An employer can have an even gap because it pays almost everybody modestly.

Condé Nast is the clearest illustration of the distribution problem. Women were 85.4% of its lowest-paid quartile and 59.8% of its top quartile, and it still reported a 19.6% median gap. Channel 4 shows the same shape more sharply: 71.1% women in the bottom quartile, 50% in the top, and the widest median gap of any large media employer in the set.

Why the gap persists in an industry full of women

Three structural things, in roughly this order of weight.

The commercial and technical split. Editorial and production roles skew female. The functions that pay most, including advertising sales leadership, technology, engineering, broadcast operations and commercial strategy, skew male. A media company’s gap is largely a measure of who sits in which of those.

Talent and star pay. Media has an unusually long tail at the top: presenters, columnists, showrunners, executive producers. Where individual pay is negotiated case by case with little published structure, differences compound, and they are inherited from decades of unequal bargaining. The BBC’s equal pay disputes from 2017 onwards, including Carrie Gracie’s resignation as China editor in 2018 over unequal pay, made that visible in a way no report had.

Freelance and short-contract work. Large parts of production run on freelancers, who are outside the reporting regulations entirely. So the published figures describe the salaried core and quietly exclude the part of the workforce where insecurity, and the motherhood penalty that comes with it, bites hardest.

It is worth saying plainly what a gender pay gap is not. It is not proof that a broadcaster pays a man and a woman differently for the same job. That is unequal pay, and it has been unlawful since the Equal Pay Act 1970, now consolidated into the Equality Act 2010. A pay gap measures who holds the senior, better-paid roles.

How to judge a media employer before you join

Ask for four things and you will know more than most candidates.

1. The top quartile figure, not the headline. Anything below 40% women in the top quartile in an industry this female is a signal.
2. The direction of travel. The government’s service holds several years of filings for each employer. One year is noise, four years is a policy.
3. Whether the narrative report exists. Publishing the six numbers is compulsory. Publishing an action plan with named owners and dates is not, which is exactly why it tells you something.
4. How freelancers and fixed-term staff are treated. Ask who gets development budget, who gets considered for staff roles, and how maternity is handled on rolling contracts.

Ofcom also publishes an annual diversity in broadcasting report, using its powers under the Communications Act 2003, which covers the main UK broadcasters and is a useful cross-check on what a broadcaster tells you about itself.

If you are weighing media against another route, our comparisons of the UK technology industry and careers for women in marketing use the same method, and best UK companies for women in 2026 ranks across sectors.

So, is media good for women?

For getting in and building a craft, yes. Entry is genuinely open, women are well represented, and the work rewards skill you can evidence.

For pay and seniority, it is average at best. A median gap of 11.9% against an 8.0% employer norm, with women making up 59% of the bottom quartile and 41% of the top, describes an industry that recruits women enthusiastically and promotes them unevenly. The employers worth your time are the ones whose top quartile figure is moving, not the ones with the warmest careers page.

Frequently asked questions

Which UK media company has the best gender pay gap?

Among large media employers in the 2025 to 2026 filings, ITV Studios reported the narrowest median hourly gap at 2.8%, with women making up 57% of its top pay quartile. Guardian News & Media and ITV Broadcasting both reported 6.8%. Check the current filing on the government’s service before relying on any of these, as figures move each year.

Why is the media gender pay gap higher than the national average?

Mostly because of where women sit rather than how many there are. Editorial and production roles are female-heavy and pay less than the commercial, technical and senior talent roles that sit above them. Long-tail negotiated pay at the top and a heavy reliance on freelance contracts, which fall outside reporting, widen it further.

Do media freelancers count in gender pay gap reporting?

Generally no. The Gender Pay Gap Information Regulations 2017 cover relevant employees, so most self-employed freelancers and many short contract workers are excluded. In production-heavy businesses that can mean a large share of the people doing the work never appears in the published figures.

Is a high gender pay gap illegal for a UK media employer?

No. Reporting a wide gap is lawful, and failing to publish is what breaches the regulations. Paying a woman less than a man for equal work is a separate and unlawful matter under the Equality Act 2010. If you think that has happened to you, Acas can advise before you raise a formal grievance.

See how employers score for women on RecruitHer’s company gender scorecard.

Data source: Gender pay gap service, 2025 to 2026 reporting year, analysed by RecruitHer in August 2026. National comparisons from the Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, April 2025. Company figures relate to named legal entities and may not cover a whole group.

Last reviewed: August 2026