The BBC has revealed its female staff are paid 9% less than their male counterparts following an independent audit into the pay disparities of its 21,000 employees.
With significant attention focused on Manchester for Theresa May's big speech at the Tory conference on Wednesday morning, the BBC published its gender pay report on its website.
According to the findings, which do not include on-air talent, the BBC's gender gap is 9.3% – better than the national average of 18.3%.
"The conclusion in the report that there is no systemic discrimination against women in the BBC’s pay arrangements for these staff is, in my judgement, amply borne out by the statistical evidence," said the report's author Sir Patrick Elias.
The BBC also looked at whether there was an ethnic wage gap and found black and minority ethnic staff were paid just 0.4% less than others at the organisation.
“Fairness in pay is vital," the BBC's director general Tony Hall said in a statement. "We have pledged to close the gender pay gap by 2020 and have targets for equality and diversity on our airwaves."
Hall said the BBC will continue to increase transparency about pay issues at the public broadcaster and would end single-sex panels for job interviews.
The BBC made headlines earlier in the year when it released information about the salaries of some of its biggest on-air stars that showed that only two of its top 10 earners were women.
In the background to the debate around gender parity at the organisation, unions are negotiating a new collective pay agreement with management and are expecting an offer by the end of the year.