Gender pay gap progress seen in latest figures

Professor Elizabeth McCrum, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Sex Equality Champion on the University Executive Board, provides an update on our latest gender pay gap figure and ongoing action being taken to reduce it.

I will start this update with some good news: our gender pay gap has reduced this year.

Our latest data shows a mean average gender pay gap of 17% (compared to 19.4% in 2022) and median average of 15.7% (down from 18.7%).

However it remains a frustration to me, and I’m sure to all of my University colleagues, to see our gender pay gap remains in double figures.

This year’s data shows positive progress, continuing a positive trend since the Covid-19 pandemic and bringing us more in line with the higher education sector average. Average, though, should not be confused with good, and we want to continue to improve.

Our new approach in action

Last year, I outlined a new approach we are taking to further drive down the difference in average pay for our male and female colleagues.

This included plans to analyse our pay gap data far earlier than previously. Discussions therefore began last summer, in which we reviewed progress we have already made and set out more proactive steps to address the pay gap.

There have been some positive developments during the past 12 months, including:

• Holding focus groups in summer 2023, aimed at helping Professional Services colleagues accelerate their career progression. These provide greater opportunities and support, which are often cited as obstacles that particularly affect women in the workplace. The focus groups resulted in work to increase awareness of personal development and secondments or fixed term role opportunities; support for colleagues who have taken up these opportunities to share their experiences with others; and a review of leadership development to assist managers in supporting career progression within their own teams. A new career progression web page has also been created to make all this information more accessible to our staff.
• Refreshing our recruitment and selection training in 2023 to increase understanding of fair recruitment practice.
• Progressing towards our institutional target of having equal numbers of male and female professors. The latest data shows we have maintained our sex balance among associate professors and our proportion of female professors is now 6% higher than the sector average – up 1% from last year.

This progress adds to ongoing work to support women in their careers at Reading. This includes continuing to offer women’s development opportunities, such as Springboard and Advance HE’s Aurora leadership programme, and supporting participants with mentors and follow-up conversations.

There is also now improved support and information on the menopause, thanks to work by the Women@Reading staff network over the past year to publish new support resources on managing the menopause and expand its Women’s Health Café initiative to include online meetings.

As a university, we continue to work towards retaining our institutional Athena Swan silver award in 2026, which includes demonstrating support for women in their careers in both academic and professional services roles.

Our numbers in context

I should add a few pieces of context to our reported pay gap.

Gender pay gaps reflect the average pay across all male and all female staff and are always influenced by the fact certain roles often contain higher numbers of women or men regardless of action we take.

Our pay gap is therefore impacted by the fact we directly employ colleagues in a range of roles across all grades, whereas many universities contract out some of their services. We also include our many Campus Jobs student workers in our calculations. These are by nature lower-paid roles and the majority of Campus Jobs workers tend to be female students. Removing Campus Jobs roles from our figures would reduce our pay gap by 2-3%.

Lastly, our gender pay gap should not be confused with equal pay. We of course ensure that men and women are paid equally for doing the same work.

I am pleased to be able to share the positive work we are taking on this important issue, and that it has started to bear fruit.

In 2024, we will continue working to decrease our gender pay gap further, and I look forward to sharing more updates on this with you.