Female staff at the University of Cambridge are being paid a fifth less on average than their male colleagues, the institution’s latest Equal Pay Review has disclosed. 

The average salary for a male employee currently stands at £39,698. The equivalent for his female counterpart, however, is £8,765 less at £31,023, which translates into a pay gap of 21.9%. This latest figure follows the trend of an annual 0.5% drop in the pay gap since the 24% high recorded in 2007.

The discrepancy becomes more pronounced the more is earned. University wages are decided according to a pay scale that goes from grades 1 to 12. The review reveals that women outnumber men in the proportion of employees within pay grades 1 to 6, but form a significant minority in the top wage brackets. 11.3% of male academics are on a grade 12 salary (upwards of £64,787 per annum), compared to just 2.3% for their female counterparts. 958 women are paid a wage grade 8 or higher (upwards of £32,901 per annum), in comparison with 1,870 men.

The review acknowledged that its findings were evidence of ‘a gender imbalance across the grading structure’, attributing the biggest pay gaps to additional payments received by academic staff. For Grade 12 employees, the gender pay gap increases from 9% to 18.7% when these extra payments are added to basic pay. Of the seven employees in this grade who received additional payments, only one was female. These payments according to the review typically comprise imbursements for research work or ‘additional responsibility’.

CUSU Women’s Officer Susy Langsdale insisted that despite a narrowing of Cambridge’s pay gap since 2007, “it is worrying that female students are still being educated in an environment where female staff are undervalued and disadvantaged.” She added that “this has knock on effects for female students’ academic confidence and so must continue to decline if female staff and students are to feel as valued and respected as their male counterparts.”

Tom Belger, a Politics finalist at Churchill College, expresses a similar sentiment: “You have to wonder how we kid ourselves ‘we’re all feminists now’ when such shameful inequalities cripple the careers of female staff today, and will almost certainly cripple those of female students tomorrow. If anything demonstrates the importance of the much-derided Women’s Campaign – not to mention the Living Wage campaign for female staff on poverty pay – then this is surely it.”

However, Jack Feltham, a third year NatSci at Christ’s College, observes: “I can see progress being made in my department but unfortunately these things take time. A lot of group leaders have been in their positions a long time and it’d be pretty unfair just to sack them and immediately replace them with a woman simply to make the statistics look better. In time, the balance will shift, but I’d imagine it’s a difficult thing to force.”

The first Equal Pay Review was commissioned in 2010 and since then the University claims to have coordinated a number of measures ensuring a ‘fair and equitable’ payment scheme. These include a CB mentoring scheme for women aspiring to be promoted to Senior Academic positions. The 2012 report, meanwhile, recommends a new measure to further diminish the gender pay gap for a returning carer’s. Under this initiative, female academics would be given funding to boost their research profiles on returning to work after looking after children.