Football’s anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out slammed clubs yesterday for failing to set out clear plans to address the game’s “unacceptable” gender pay gaps.

All Premier League clubs and most Championship teams met the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) deadline of Wednesday to publish their average hourly pay rates for men and women, with several of Scotland’s biggest clubs revealing their gender pay gaps too.

According to the Government Equalities Office, more than 10,000 companies with more than 250 employees complied with the EHRC request and the median pay gap was 9.7 per cent in favour of men. The Office of National Statistics, however, has a gender pay gap of 18.4 per cent if you include smaller companies and part-time work.

Compared to these figures, the football industry is fairly typical, providing you strip out the salaries paid to players and first-team coaches, as they skew the data and throw up huge gender pay gaps of more than 75 per cent.

Looking at just non-playing staff, 12 of the 20 Premier League clubs beat the median hourly gender pay gap of 9.7 per cent, with Manchester City, Manchester United, West Ham, Arsenal and Brighton actually paying women more than men. City’s pay gap in favour of women, for example, is over 17 per cent.

Men at West Brom, however, are paid 34.3 per cent more than women, with Stoke and Bournemouth not far behind and Swansea, Southampton, Huddersfield, Crystal Palace and Burnley all significantly above the national average.

Spurs and Watford revealed 3 per cent pay gaps, while Chelsea, Everton, Leicester, Liverpool and Newcastle have no or negligible gaps.

In Scotland, Celtic also reported no pay gap but Rangers, Hearts and Aberdeen were all at least double the national average, while Championship sides Brentford, Millwall, Norwich, Reading, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday also posted disappointing figures.

Most clubs in League One and League Two have not published pay gap data because they have fewer than 250 employees.

In a statement, Kick It Out acknowledged the overall picture for football is better if you exclude first-team wages but said “any pay gap relating to a protected characteristic is unacceptable.”

It also said it was “particularly disappointing” that few clubs have published a “clear action plan” for addressing this problem and called on the English Football League and Premier League to take “proactive measures.”

One issue of obvious concern is the relatively small number of women in senior positions at clubs and throughout the game.

Liverpool are a clear exception to the rule with women holding nearly 40 per cent of the higher-paid jobs at the club, twice the figure for most clubs. At Stoke, for example, only 2 per cent of the best jobs are held by women and at Swansea it is just 6 per cent.

West Ham’s hourly median pay is almost 10 per cent better for women than men but women only hold 14 per cent of the club’s better-paid jobs.