Last week it was reported that of the six F1 teams based in the UK, the gulf in pay between men and women was higher than the national average at all but one team.

While Racing Point, which employs 382 of the total 4,023 staff employed directly by the teams, paid its female employees an hourly wage 12.6% lower than that earned by men, women at Williams were being paid an hourly wage 25% lower than their male colleagues. The national average being 18%.

Claire Williams argues that the rules are misleading, while insisting that the involvement of women in motorsport is about more than money.

"For me, certainly, the regulations by which we have to report our gender pay gap, which we have to do now in the UK, are misleading or they can bring about misleading results," she said.

"For me, the means by which you test how well you are doing to ensure gender equality within your business is firstly by the number of women you actually have and year-on-year we have more and more women coming to work at Williams and I'm pleased to say not just in the more female-dominated roles we've had in motorsport in the past, of admin and marketing. More women are coming up now in engineering roles; we've got more women in our aerodynamics department, in vehicle design, development etc.

"But it's about how you support that talent as well," she continued. "We've just recently launched, about four months ago, at the start of this year, a women at Williams network, and I think we are probably the only team to do that. It's about not only encouraging talent to come into our team but it's about how you support them when they are there.

"Secondly, the most important number for me when we are looking at gender equality is how you much you pay your female staff versus your male, and we went through a big analysis on this two years ago, before we even had to report on gender pay, and we made sure that every woman that was doing the same job as a man was paid the same amount as that male employee for doing that same job.

"For me, those are the three greatest measures of gender equality within a business and so I have absolutely no qualms knowing that the women in our organisation are treated on an equal standing as our men."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by SocF1, 01/05/2019 16:01

"Claire really should of gone already and if you really wanted more well paid Jobs for women in F1,bring back grid girls as they are a part of F1."

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2. Posted by ZJAY, 01/05/2019 0:19

"@ Oldbuzzard

With all due respect gender pay gap is different from equal pay. You can have equal pay for the same job description and still have a gender pay gap. The law and reporting was designed to cause this exact confusion.

To eliminate gender pay gap you have to have equal pay + equal number of people in each job description ( or pay category).

Basically overall women and men should work at the same skill level and same hours on average across an organization + equal pay of course.

While equal pay should be no brainer and implemented immediately, equal gender pay requires women to step up their skill level and commitment to work and/or men cutting back skill level and commitment to work. "

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3. Posted by Oldbuzzard, 30/04/2019 17:16

"Boy, that’s a chip off the old block! Claire’s comment sounds exactly her Dad’s used to. Sir Frank was the consummate silver tongued devil and could make a PM’s speech out of a simple, “We’re trying to do better.” The answer to this gender pay gap is to pay all workers the same within the job description. If you can’t afford that, hire fewer people and make them work harder. "

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4. Posted by Paul C, 30/04/2019 15:48

"Shouldn't the end results be more important than the payroll numbers for Williams? "

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Gender pay gap rules misleading, says Williams

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