Equal Pay Day 2023: see the gender pay gap at your university

These figures are indicative of an issue but meaningless without any analysis into the causality. Statistically you could prove many types of pay inequality based on other factors, race, religion and even height,but when viewed alone they do not tell you the full picture. e.g. A male and female lecturer doing an identical job with identical skills, the male has been in post much longer and is at the top of grade hence statistically there is pay inequality at a point in time, but not necessarily an issue that needs to be addressed in this example. Also the high earners in the system can skew the data if they are predominantly male - there may be fewer of them but they contribute significantly more to the weighting. Having worked on an Athena Swan board I have seen the data sets but when you start to dig deeper there are all kinds of pay inequalities in the system, within gender as well as between them, within Teams, Departments and Faculties. The whole reward structure within the sector needs to be re-evaluated. Efforts to address gender pay inequality shocked me at my institution as they seemed to only want to address the issue for female senior academic staff and had no thought for the residences and catering female staff at the other end of the spectrum. Recruitment practices also need to be considered, with the nepotism and favouritism seen so often eradicated, so we do actually end up with the best person for the job. Focussing on a single type of inequality is inappropriate as the ineqaulity felt by a anybody irrespective of characteristics is no less hurtful, important or worthy of being addressed just because it does not give rise to sensationalist headlines.