Sector Spotlight - Higher Education

Whilst the number of female lecturers and researchers at British universities is experiencing a very slow increase,  the pay gap has slightly expanded according to figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.   

Women make up only 18.7% of university professor, however this has increased from 17.5% in 2006-07. 

The improvement is slow , particularly as in 2000 the NAoTFHE ( the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education *)  ratified the agreement  between higher education unions and the employers to provide equal opportunities over the following issues.  Induction, promotion,hours, holidays and contract researchers.   Institutions are also expected to set targets for all groups of workers and monitor them.

Why the lack of women in the upper echelons of University life?  The situation is reflective of the workplace in general,  lecturers are recruited from industry and recruitment of women in many sectors is sparse,   ( see Spotlight on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

Members of  Opportunity Now 2008/09 from the education sector  benchmarking survey results:

The education sector returned consistently higher scores for all sections than the Opportunity Now median.   An overall benchmarking score of 74.2 against the average of 68.7%.  Gender scored 72.1% against the norm of 66.2% ,  whilst performance improvement returned a 57.6% score against the Opportunity Now average of  51.2%.
Committment and engagement

*  NATFHE joined with the AUT to form the University and College Union (UCU) on 1 June 2006.