It would be interesting to know if Cambridge is significantly different from its peers in the Russell Group.

Mind you, you’d think they could put up a better defence than they did, being who they are!

Good work Lynne. Having studied there not so long ago I am hardly surprised by their complacency on the matter. There is a great sense that ‘normal rules don’t apply for us. They also have a great many non-academic staff working for little above the minimum wage. Although omehow I dont imagine that that New Labour’s equalities commission accepts complaints about people underpaying the working class.

“If you compare people on each pay grade, then for two-thirds of the grades, women on that grade get paid less than men”

That does seem bizarre but I would like to take a closer look at the stats.

For the rest of it, what is your explanation?

I would have thought that academia was the last place women would have been disadvantaged by their gender. It should be a pure meritocracy. You correctly state that the most talented academics are fast tracked up the scale so, to follow your argument, there should be an equal proportion of women benefiting from this. Why aren’ they?

Unless you posit some kind of male conspiracy (surely not) the only possible explanation I can think of is that men and women are not the same.

Can I say that?

[3] Well, you can say it.

I have thought of a possible explanation for what’s going on here. The University is in the grip of a sinister male gay mafia. Further investigation will show that women are indeed paid the same as straight men. But then I went to the Other Place, so I would say that…

“But then I went to the Other Place, so I would say that…”

Ditto, Cambridge is an irrelevence.

irrelevance*

Most academics produce their best work in their 20′s so its a field where newcomers should be paid more than people who have been around a while.

Lynne, an interesting story. Would you be able to point us in the direction of the data. Is it a study of just Cambridge or other universities also? It would be useful for students involved in gender campaigns nationwide to share information and analysis so that the issue could be raised locally.

A tentative explanation: there are a number of ‘steps’ within each pay grade. If the women are (on average) on a lower step than the men, the resulting average will be different between men and women (in other words, there are a lot more women at the lower end(s) of the pay scale, which might be the result of systemic discrimination, the impact of maternity leave, or the fact that there are a lot more younger female academics who entered the profession in the last two decades. Either that, or there really is a sinister patriarchal cabal).

Similarlly, Featherstone writes:

But academia – despite its rather fusty image at times – is not one of those. Look at what happens to the youngest and brightest new academic stars – they are often snapped up and become professors at a young age. Decades of service are not needed.

This ignores the rest of those academics – male and female – who have to work their way up the pay scale (unless Featherstone’s arguing for more women to be fast-tracked to even up the score).

The report is here.

Elle: The post on Lynne’s own blog has a link through to the university report which has more details: http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/2009/02/not-so-equal-pay-at-cambridge.htm

Just when you think it is safe to become a Lib-dem…

If Cambridge are genuinely underpaying like for like on the basis gender, they will be punished by a suitably dynamic market in higher education. Perhaps they are relying on trading on their historic status for a little while longer.

I’m really not usually the sort of person to pick holes in this sort of thing, I don’t mean to be difficult and I have absolutely no problem with the interference of bodies like the EHRC in, ahem, “dynamic markets.”

But if you insist on immediate action on divergent wages between the genders *averaged over all pay grades*, isn’t there a very real danger that the university will find it easier to lay off female cleaners and replace them with men, than to undertake the opposite operation in academic posts?

This wouild cut the average male wage across the institution, rapidly narrowing the pay gap, but in reality shafting women workers.

Of course, conducting a gender pay audit only within each pay grade is no solution to this, as it would do nothing to address underpromotion of women.

Can anyone offer a answer?