From today, women in design are working for free – here's why

Despite equal-pay laws dating back to 1970, UK women still earn far less than men on average - roughly 81.4p for every £1 a man earns in design studios. By the time the calendar hits 22 October, Nat Maher from Kerning the Gap points out, women designers will effectively work the rest of the year unpaid (18.6% of 253 working days) due to this gap.

Why? In an industry dominated by small, owner-run creative agencies, pay decisions are often opaque and driven by founder culture rather than formal policy. And it's something even the top design agencies need to work on.

Nat Maher

Kerning the Gap is a community that Nat Maher started in 2015, aimed at getting more women into leadership roles within the design industry.

As Nat explains, design’s “handcrafted” studio culture, the type with often two or three partners and no real HR team, means bias can creep in unchecked.

Studies show men dominate senior roles and firms tend to hire, without malice, “people like us,” reinforcing a boys’-club effect. Meanwhile, assumptions about motherhood and part-time work don’t tell the whole story: McKinsey finds that women’s greater likelihood to work part-time or take career breaks only explains about 25% of the pay gap. In other words, most of the gap comes from promotion rates, negotiation bias and cultural blind spots - not biology.

Nat stresses that merely having equal-pay laws isn’t enough: enforcement is patchy and a law won’t change an entrenched studio culture. Instead, she argues, smaller studios must implement practical fixes now. Below are five things every creative studio (even a tiny one!) can do today to start closing the gap:

• Promote diverse leadership. Aim for more women (and other under‑represented voices) in decision‑making roles. Nat notes that design thinking itself relies on imagining others’ experiences, so naturally leadership teams need that breadth of perspective. In practice this means hiring or fast-tracking high-potential women and minority candidates (not just “been-there” veterans) and seeking external advisers to challenge your perspective.
• Engage an HR advisor or mentor. Even if you can’t afford an in-house HR manager, get a consultant or coach to review your pay practices. An HR partner can flag unconscious bias or legal issues (and keep you “on the straight and narrow,” as Nat puts it). For tiny studios, this might be a part-time consultant or even joining a peer group; the point is to have someone checking that pay, promotion and hiring are fair. (Clue: great HR know that retaining staff saves money, so investing in fairness and career development is actually smart business.)
• Be transparent about pay. Publish salary bands and raise criteria for each role. Explicit pay scales and promotion paths force fairness. When salaries are secret, women tend to ask for less when they negotiate than their male counterparts, while employers may subconsciously offer them less. By contrast, pay transparency provides clear targets. It also helps women negotiate on equal terms. An easy first step is to share a simple pay‑range or “even‑over” guideline for each position with your team This also makes annual raise discussions less taboo.
• Value flexible and parental work. Treat part-time or flexi-time roles as fellow first-class citizens. Nearly a quarter of women work part-time (often for vital reasons) compared to about 15% of men, so if part-time staff lag behind in raises or promotions, it deepens the gap. Make sure anyone returning from maternity/paternity leave gets an on-track review, otherwise they may take the first step falling quietly off the career ladder. Reward contributions fairly regardless of hours worked: for example, if someone is on a 4-day week, don’t proportionally shrink their development opportunities. Nat reminds us that many women simply don’t ask for pay bumps after parental leave, so studios should automatically trigger salary reviews for anyone returning to work, and ensure flexible roles have genuine paths to advancement.
• Formalise mentoring and training. Encourage senior staff to mentor juniors (including “reverse mentoring” so leaders learn about each other’s experiences). Mentorship builds confidence and accountability: Nat notes that mentees often achieve a “confidence up-cycle” as they overcome challenges with support. This is crucial because confidence (and knowing how to negotiate) is part of the problem. In practice, set aside brief 1:1s every few months for career coaching, it’s a small time investment compared to the payoff in loyalty and performance.

Implementing these fixes isn’t just the “right” thing morally, it’s good design practice and good business. A diversity of voices in creative leadership improves the work, says Nat, with richer and more representative ideas, and teams that feel supported produce better results and stay longer. Pay equity also cuts turnover costs (hiring and training are expensive). Ultimately, by watching these outcomes closely, being ready to listen and adjust, studios can move from lip service to real change. As Nat puts it, culture follows leadership. Make equality a strategic goal, and the pay gap will start to close, meaning women in design stop effectively working for free from 22 October onward.