IWD 2021 and the Gender Pay Gap | Oxford Protein Informatics Group

Throughout the pandemic, the statistics on division of childcare and home-schooling responsibilities have been shocking: mothers are taking on 150% more homeschooling than fathers (1), while 71% of working mothers’ furlough applications were rejected (2). A third of working mothers reported having lost some or all work due to a lack of childcare during the pandemic, with this figure rising to 44% for BAME mothers. On top of this, 90% of the UK’s 2 million single parents are women (3). These unequal divisions are threatening to undo decades of progress towards gender equality.

In April 2019, the pay gap between men and women in the UK was 17.3% (4), and at the current rate of gender pay gap reduction, the gap will not be closed until 2052 (5). The causes of this gap continue to be unequal caring responsibilities, more women in low-paid work and (illegal) discrimination. BAME women are also subject to the ethnicity pay gap. While this varies regionally and by ethnicity, in London in 2018 the overall figure was 23% (6).

The University of Oxford last published gender pay data in April 2019, at which point the mean gender pay gap stood at 21.6% (7). This was mainly attributed to the lack of women in senior roles in the University: 60.7% of the people in the upper quartile of pay grades are men. The university has various plans in place to increase the representation of women in senior roles, outlined in the 2020 gender pay gap report (8). Within the Department of Statistics, we were able to obtain data gathered in 2019 regarding the gender balance of staff. At that time, just 6 of 25 Professors (counting Associate, Statutory and Research Professors) and 3 out of 10 Postdoctoral Researchers were women.

The lack of female representation in senior roles is mirrored across many industries. Women make up only 34% of MPs, 20% of senior civil servants and 6% of FTSE 100 company CEOs. None of the senior civil servants or CEOs were women of colour (9).

These nationwide and internal figures certainly indicate quite how much work there is yet to do to achieve equality in pay and more specifically in the representation of women in senior roles. There are various initiatives (e.g. Athena Swan) and techniques (e.g. implicit bias training) to promote gender balance in all levels of positions, however progress is slow: increasing the representation of women in leadership roles across politics, education and health by only 15% took around 15 years.

International Women’s Day, marked on the 8th of March (the date in 1917 on which women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia) served as an important reminder for people across the world how far there is to go to achieve gender equality in workplaces. However, in the days following, we were also reminded of the discrimination that women face on a daily basis outside of the workplace. The treatment of Meghan Markle by public figures, along with the shocking murder of Sarah Everard – for which a serving police officer has been charged – highlighted how women are harassed and abused on a daily basis yet are not listened to when it comes to reporting such crimes. Lower pay based on gender is not separate from this wider systemic discrimination that women face, and it should not be treated as such. When it comes to reducing the gender pay gaps, we must address gender-based discrimination and inequality across all women of all backgrounds and ethnicities, within and outwith any given organisation, not just those that are already in a position to apply to the senior roles traditionally occupied by men.

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Anna Carbery

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