Is gender equality slipping down the agenda?
Is the campaign for greater gender equality at work drifting a little and is now the time...read more
New figures reveal that female graduates in nearly every academic subject earn less than men five years after finishing their studies, even though they are more likely to be employed.
Female graduates earn less than male graduates in every field except performing arts, according to a new study.
The Longitudinal Education Outcomes data released by the Department for Education found looked at 34 subjects and at female and male earnings five years after finishing their studies.
Even though women were more likely to be employed, the data found that in 26 of the 34 subjects, more than half of the education providers which gathered data saw male median earnings exceed female median earnings by more than 5%. The subjects with the largest proportions of providers where female median earnings were more than 5% lower than male median earnings were Nursing and midwifery (95.3% of 42 included providers), Education and teaching (86.6% of 52), and Medicine and dentistry (81.9% of 33 included providers).
Some 54.8% of the 42 included providers for Nursing and midwifery had female graduate median earnings that were over 15% lower than their male graduate median earnings.
In Nursing and midwifery, Education and teaching, Veterinary sciences and, Medicine and dentistry there were no providers where female median earnings were at least 5% more than male median earnings.
Veterinary sciences had the highest proportion of providers where female and male median earnings were within 5% of each other (60%). The remaining 40% were equally distributed between the two groups where female median earnings were 5% to 15% lower than male median earnings and where female median earnings were over 15% lower than male median earnings.
The only subject in which most providers saw female median earnings exceed male median earnings by more than 5% was Performing arts where 44.1% of providers had higher female median earnings.
A recent analysis of gender pay gap estimates by HR systems provider Ciphr found that most popular occupations in the UK – including those with a high proportion of women in the workforce – have a pay gap that favours men. It found that around two-thirds (65%) of professions with a predominantly female workforce (where over 60% of workers are women) have gender pay gaps in favour of men – which means men are paid more per hour on average. Only 2% have no reported pay gaps and a third have gender pay gaps in favour of women, said Ciphr.
Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the female-dominated occupations employing over 100,000 people in the UK have a gender pay gap in favour of men. For female-dominated occupations with workforces of over 330,000, over 8 in 10 (82%) have gender pay gaps in favour of men.
According to the Ciphr, some of the occupations with the largest gender pay gaps (and workforces over 100,000) include functional managers and directors (including town clerks, planning managers, research directors and trade union managers) and legal associate professionals (including legal assistants, litigators, data protection officers, and land registrars). The average gender pay gaps for these occupational groups are 21.3% and 16.8% respectively.
The analysis shows that there is also around a 12% gender pay gap for office managers and local government administrative occupations (12.5% and 12.1% respectively).
In other administrative occupations – which includes numerous administrative and clerical roles and where nearly three-quarters (74%) of workers are women, there is an 8.9% gender pay gap in favour of men.
Moreover, the analysis found that around two-thirds of the UK’s human resource managers and directors, bookkeepers, payroll managers and wages clerks, and records clerks and assistants, are women, yet all these job roles have a gender pay gap of nearly 7% in favour of men (6.5%, 6.9%, and 6.5% respectively).
An even greater proportion of receptionists and teaching assistants in the UK are women (89-90%), yet both these careers have a gender pay gap of 5.1% in favour of men, according to the analysis.
Some of the other female-dominated occupations with pay gaps over 5% (and workforces of less than 100,000) include PR professionals, cleaning and housekeeping managers and supervisors, bank and post office clerks, specialist nurses, and project support officers.