Advance HE’s Chief Executive Alison Johns presented at the ECC (Educational Competencies Consortium) Annual Conference in London on the issue of gender pay.
The ECC conference theme was centred on equalities and reward. The presentation focussed on the Higher Education sector response to reports on gender pay, what the key challenges are for higher education and what good practice looks like.
Alison presented an analysis of 122 English Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) publically available narratives, seeking to identify the main explanations underpinning the gender pay gap and the most frequently mentioned gender equality initiatives currently trying to mitigate this gap.
Advance HE’s Aurora programme was specifically referred to in more than 40% of the narratives when HEI’s described an action or initiative they were taking to reduce their gender pay gap. Aurora is a development programme for all people who identify as a woman. Over the past five years, 4,613 women from over 171 institutions across the UK and Ireland have participated in the programme.
Alison Johns, Chief Executive of Advance HE said, “While the sector is making good progress we cannot rest on our laurels. We need to continue our work to better understand the causes of the gender pay gap and what works to reduce it. And related to that, take concerted action to reduce the pay gap. Indeed the UK still has the biggest gender pay gap in Europe”.
Read the full Advance HE research insights here: The gender pay gap in English higher education and Actions to mitigate the gender pay gap in English higher education.