Sweaty Betty – the female-focused London-based athleisurewear brand that claims to “aim to empower all women” – has one of the largest gender pay gaps of any company of its size in the UK, according to the Standard.
The figures show that Sweaty Betty has the 90th largest gender pay gap among the more than 10,000 companies in the government database, or the 11th largest gap among all companies with more than 1,000 employees.
The average woman in the company earns 46.2 pence for every pound a man earns, or 53.8 percent less. This puts Sweaty Betty in the bottom 0.4 percent of all companies of its size in terms of pay equality.
Even so, if you look at the mean rather than the median, there are only 21 companies with a larger gender pay gap than Sweaty Betty – and 13 of those were football clubs. At Sweaty Betty, the average pay gap was 56.4%.
Official figures show that the lower-paying positions in the company are almost exclusively filled by women. Even in the top quarter of jobs at Sweaty Betty, most are filled by women, but the proportion of men in this group is much higher than in the lower-paying positions.
Sweaty Betty’s large gender pay gap doesn’t seem to be an inevitable consequence of the industry it operates in. Rival athleisurewear brand Lululemon, its direct competitor, had an average gender pay gap of just 6%. At Lululemon, however, the average gap was smaller at 38%.
None of the other companies of similar size with larger gender pay gaps were in the fashion or retail sectors.
Figures released just two years ago showed the gender pay gap at the brand was lower than the UK average, at just 10 pence in the pound.
However, the pay gap jumped in last year’s figures and continues to rise in this year’s figures. The rapid rise in the pay gap occurred in the first year that the data covered the acquisition of Sweaty Betty by US fashion company Wolverine Worldwide, which bought the brand for £300 million from its founders Tamara and Simon Hill-Norton.
According to Sweaty Betty’s website, the brand, founded in Notting Hill in 1998, has “a mission to empower all women through fitness and beyond.”
“This means finding more sustainable ways of working, ensuring inclusivity is at the heart of everything we do, and investing in our community through the Sweaty Betty Foundation,” the website continues.
The company is known for promoting body positivity and last month launched a new campaign and brand goals aimed at “empowering women.”
Sweaty Betty and Wolverine Worldwide did not respond to a request for comment.
