The average gender pay gap has shot up at Zaha Hadid Architects, while other UK studios, including Foster + Partners and Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, have narrowed the difference in pay between male and female employees.
Official data from this year’s UK gender pay reporting revealed that the median hourly pay gap – which looks at the middle “typical” wages in a list from highest to lowest pay – has more than doubled at Zaha Hadid Architects.
The median hourly pay gap at the studio rose from 6.3 per cent for 2024/25 – the studio’s lowest since 2018 – to 14.5 per cent this year. This means that middle-ranking women at the studio earn 86p for every £1 earned by middle-ranking men.
This is a close return to the studio’s figure in 2023/24, when the median hourly pay gap was 15.8 per cent.
Despite the fall and rise in the median figures, Zaha Hadid Architects’ mean hourly pay gap has remained around 22 per cent for the last three annual reports. This calculates the average pay across all employees.
Zaha Hadid Architects’ “employment policies wholly factored on merit”
The studio also reported one of the largest bonus pay disparities of architecture studios in the data, with women’s median bonus pay 33.8 per cent lower than men’s.
However, a spokesperson for the firm told Dezeen that “women and men in equivalent roles are paid equally”.
“Our employment policies and criteria are wholly factored on merit, accounting for the skillset, knowledge, and relevant experience of each candidate,” the studio said.
Zaha Hadid Architects added that the statistics were affected by the “increase in the percentage of young women architects at entry level” at the studio.
“Over the period, the proportion of new staff joining Zaha Hadid Architects at the beginning of their careers in architecture comprised significantly more women than men,” the studio explained.
“This increase in the percentage of young women architects at entry level choosing to start their professional journeys with Zaha Hadid Architects is evident in our gender pay gap this year,” it added.
“All those joining our teams are supported by Zaha Hadid Architects’ policies and initiatives focused on professional growth and staff retention. We continue to enhance programmes to ensure the ongoing progression of our younger generation of women architects enter Zaha Hadid Architects’ upper pay quartiles this year.”
UK companies with over 250 employees are legally required to report pay gap statistics annually. Similar to previous years, all architecture studios included in this year’s data paid men a higher median hourly pay than women.
Joining Zaha Hadid Architects with a widening pay gap was BDP, which had median figures rise from 16.4 per cent to 17.6 per cent. This means that for every £1 earned by a middle-ranking man, the middle-ranking woman earns 82p.
Sheppard Robson also reported a larger median pay gap of 11.6 per cent, compared to 10.2 per cent last year. However, the studio is performing better than the national average pay gap, which this year stands at 12.8 per cent.
Majority of UK studios making small improvements
Compared to last year’s data, the size of the median hourly pay gap has narrowed this year at the majority of UK architecture studios.
Corstorphine & Wright reported one of architecture’s largest gender pay gaps at 25.4 per cent, though it made improvements on last year’s figure, which came in at 32.9 per cent.
Architecture and engineering firm HDR was also among the worst-performing studios, with a median wage disparity of 41.1 per cent and a bonus pay difference of 41 per cent.
Foster + Partners reduced its median pay gap to 10 per cent, compared to 12.3 per cent last year. The median difference in bonus pay at the studio was 10.4 per cent.
Other studios that narrowed their gender pay gaps included Stride Treglown, Gensler, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Allies and Morrison and Purcell, which reported differences of 16, 13.5, 12.1, 11.2 and 10.12 per cent respectively.
Studios with pay differences below 10 per cent included Grimshaw, Hawkins/Brown, PRP and TP Bennett, which reported gaps of 9.6, 9.4, 9.4 and 6.5 per cent respectively.
Last year, a major RIBA-commissioned report identified “several examples of blatant and uncompromising sexism” in the UK’s architecture industry, finding that women in the field are more than twice as likely to feel that having children has harmed their career compared to women in the country in general.
The top photo is by Creatopy via Unsplash.
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