Why do UK universities have such large gender pay gaps? (PSA Blog)
In the Political Studies Association blog, Fran Amery from the University of Bath comments on gender pay gaps within UK universities.
As UK universities start to release their gender pay gap reports for 2019, new research examines the reasons behind the (often large) disrepancies, and considers what measures need to be implemented in the future in order to close the gap.
The gender pay gap in academia is once again in the news, as universities start to release their gender pay gap reports for 2019.
Although there have been some improvements, as with 2018, the picture remains pretty depressing. Of the institutions that had released their reports at the time of writing, as the BBC reports, more than nine out of ten institutions pay their average male employee more than they pay their average female employee with the sector as a whole having a median pay gap 4.6 percentage points higher than the national average.
The reports also reveal wide discrepancies between institutions. In 2018, the mean pay gap of universities ranged between 1% and 45%, the median pay gap ranged between -1.9% and 37.4%, and the proportion of women in the top quartile of pay ranged between 22.4% and 64.4%.
What, then, lies behind these differences? Why are some universities doing not nearly as badly as others?