Universities in the UK beat national average on gender pay gap but large discrepancies remain

By Julia Robinson2024-03-22T14:30:00

Models of tiny people sitting on stacks of coins. A man is on the tallest stack and a mother and baby is on the smallest with two other woman in between.

Source: © Hyejin Kang/Shutterstock

Report estimates that in 14 years’ time women in higher education will be paid the same as men

Women working in higher education continued to earn, on average, 11.9% less than men across all roles in 2022, a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) has revealed.

Although this is smaller than the national median gender pay gap of 14.4%, the data, which covers 2017 to 2022, shows significant variation between institutions with pay gaps ranging from zero up to 41%. In addition, data for some institutions showed that the pay gap widened over the five-year period.

Overall, the median gender pay gap across higher education has decreased since 2017 from 16.3% to 11.9%. This is a larger decrease compared with the national average which fell from 18.4% to 14.4% over the same period.