AI Risks Widening Gender Pay Gap, Employers Warned
As new legislation comes into force, employers are being urged to ensure that AI does not undermine equality action and women’s pay and conditions.
Artificial intelligence could undermine progress to closing the UK’s gender pay gap, according to the authors of a new guide to employment legislation which comes into force next month. How to close the gender pay gap: A practical guide aims to help employers with 250 or more staff develop and implement equality action plans required by the 2025 Employment Rights Act. But the authors warn unless these plans take account of AI, they risk widening women’s pay gaps and undermining women’s leadership. The guide provides employers with step-by-step actions to meet new legal requirements and future-proof their equality strategies.
Published by independent think-tank Global 50/50, the guide is based on the recent Closing the Gap? Report, using eight years of data from the Global Health 50/50 Gender & Health Index. UK law already requires organisations with 250-plus employees to publish an annual gender pay gap report. Now, from 6 April 2026, they must also develop and publish equality action plans — voluntary for the first year, then mandatory from April 2027. Global 50/50 warns that failure to account for AI risks could expose organisations to legal, reputational and workforce risks.
“Equality action plans offer a pathway to workplaces where everyone is valued, supported and able to advance their careers, and where barriers to women’s leadership are dismantled,” says Dr Lynsey Robinson, health sector lead at Global 50/50. “We welcome equality action plans as a step in the right direction, but they will have only limited impact if they are not properly measured, monitored, evaluated and enforced.”
However, Global 50/50 warns that equality action plans must keep pace with the growing use of AI or risk widening the gender pay gap. With AI used more and more in recruitment, workplace processes and career development, employers should consider how it may amplify gender bias or impede efforts to eliminate pay disparities. “We are concerned the legislation doesn’t mention the potential for AI to widen the gender pay gap,” says Penny East, chief executive of the Fawcett Society. “As AI becomes more embedded in the health and social care, admin and public sectors, the government must ensure that women aren’t left with a widening pay and pension gap. Our research indicates clear evidence that AI tools without necessary safeguards and tests can embed and entrench bias.”
As well as practical tips for creating equality action plans, the new guide features examples of organisations from across the world which are already using them to close the gender pay gap and to promote women’s leadership. “Women’s leadership matters,” adds Dr Robinson. “When more women are represented in leadership roles, equality follows. Our research shows that organisations with women CEOs had, on average, smaller gender pay gaps over an eight-year period than those led by men. The gender pay gap is not simply a number. It marks a life-long unequal distribution of opportunity, power and privilege.”
Alongside inspiring stories of organisations practising feminist leadership values to close the gender pay gap, the guide contains a wealth of practical information, resources and case studies covering the entire employee journey from recruitment through retention and progression. There’s advice on what to include in equality action plans and what they can do now to develop or update them.
“We hope that employers both in the UK and internationally can learn from the women leaders and feminist leadership principles featured in the guide to accelerate change in their organisation,” says Dr Robinson. “Closing the gender pay gap benefits people of all genders. It corrects historic imbalances, challenges ingrained stereotypes about what ‘men’s work’ or ‘women’s work’ is worth, and ensures that everyone is treated equitably for their contributions.”