Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Graduate Gender Pay Gap

The gender pay gap between women and men graduates has long been an indicator of pay disparities later along the career path. New data released by the Higher Education Statistics Agency has shown there is still a £2,000 gender gap in average graduate salaries six months after leaving a full-time university course – £19,500 for women and £21,500 for men.
While the median pay for graduates is now level at £20,000, men are still more likely to be the top earners and women the low earners. Curt Rice, head of Norway’s Committee on Gender Balance in Research and a professor at the University of Tromsø, say it’s important to keep in mind that the median salary is not the average. “While the median is the same, it’s clear from the data that the average salary for men is higher.”

Rice points to the fact that there are 50% more men than women earning between £25,000-£30,000 and nearly four times as many men as women earning more than £35,000.
Out of the 430,000 university graduates who answered the survey six months after graduating from a full time course, 66% disclosed their salary. The mean salary for both men and women has increased £500 for 2012-13 (as the graph below shows), but the difference still remains at £2,000 between men and women.
It’s worth noting that the survey has been expanded this year, and now includes more graduates from other types of higher education institutions, and so may not be directly comparable.
Click to enlarge

For the first time since the 2008-2009 version of the survey, the median salary of graduates six months after leaving a full-time university course was the same for men as for women, at £20,000.
But the results show that women are still more likely to be in lower-paid jobs and there were more men in the higher salary bands (see graph below). Of those earning between £25,000 and £30,000, 16.7% were men and 10.7% were women, while for top-end earners making more than £40,000, 2.3% were men and 0.5% were women.
Percentage of UK full-time first-degree who entered full-time work by salary band and sex, 2012-13. HESA
 
taken from here
 
Socialism will mean the abolition of wage slavery - the wages system -  ushering in a system in which all will be valued for their contribution to society and none will go without for lack of money. 
 
 
 

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