At Swansea University, we are committed to ensuring fairness and equal opportunities for all our colleagues.
One of our priorities is to tackle the gender pay gap. We know that there is still a long way to go within our organisation, and in our industry as a whole. That’s why we actively look for ways to close the gap and regularly monitor our progress, and being honest about how we measure up is important to us.
The gender pay gap is the percentage difference of average pay between men and women. This is different to equal pay, which compares the pay of men and women doing the same job.
The gap is calculated in two ways; the mean average is the total of all salaries divided by the number of colleagues; the median average is the middle salary, when ordering them from lowest to highest.
In 2017, a new gender pay gap reporting legislation was introduced to organisations in England. This legislation requires organisations to report on their gender pay gap, in a specific way and to publish their results on the gov.uk website.
Although we aren’t required to report in-line with this legislation, we have chosen to as we want to be transparent and make our results easier to understand and share.
We’ve actually been reporting on our gender pay gap long before 2017, as this was already required under Welsh legislation, but the way in which we report has now evolved.
Our mean average pay gap is 15.3% and our median average is 11.1%.
The main reason for our gap is due to the balance of male and female colleagues working at different levels; more male colleagues than females work in senior roles; more female colleagues than males work at lower graded roles. This chart below shows the proportion of men and women in each quartile of our university pay structure in more detail:
| Quartile | % Male | % Female |
|---|---|---|
| Upper quartile | 60% | 40% |
| Upper middle quartile | 47% | 53% |
| Lower middle quartile | 44% | 56% |
| Lower quartile | 40% | 60% |
Other universities may also report on their bonus pay gender gap, but we don’t currently have an organisation-wide bonus scheme. However, the exception to this is our clinical staff, whose salaries are determined by the NHS and are beyond our control. Any payments awarded to individuals in this group have been captured in the overall gender pay calculations, and will therefore have impacted on our pay gap.
Our gender pay gap is decreasing, and has been for some time, but we need to keep working hard to reduce it further.
We aim to build gender equality monitoring into everything we do. We continuously look for ways of making a positive change and strive to learn from each and every opportunity that we identify. Just some of our areas of focus include:
We aim to do everything we can to enable all academic colleagues to work to their full potential. As part of this, we continually review contributing factors, to ensure that our female academics, in particular, feel confident to apply for academic promotion.
We do still have an underrepresentation of females at professor level in particular, which negatively impacts our gender pay gap, but we are working to improve this and have seen some positive improvements.
Our data shows a 62% increase in the total number of female academics promoted across all levels, from lecturer through to professor, compared to six years ago. There has also been a 21% increase in successful female applicants across all levels compared to six years ago and the female success rate (48%) was higher than males (40%) in 2021. We’ve also seen a significant increase in the overall percentage of female professors in our total colleague composition; rising from 13% in 2014 to 24% in 2021.
In addition to investing in our Academic Career Pathways, we continuously benchmark our approach to fairness in pay. As a result, in 2019 we increased our professorial base rate of pay. The increase benefitted 40% of our female professors and 13% of our male professors at the time. This increase continues to benefit academics who join our organisation at, or are promoted to, that level.
Our sector leading Professional Development Review (PDR) system enables staff to formally have a meaningful conversation regarding their personal development. PDRs are in addition to our other development initiatives, such as our mentoring programme, and for the last 9 years 99% of staff have completed their annual PDR.
Since 2012 the number of females working at grade 9 and above, in Professional Services, has more than doubled, they continue to increase and currently represent 53% of this group in 2021.
We also invest in career development and training programmes, to specifically assist in closing the gender pay gap. For example, we proudly offer the Aurora Leadership programme to our female colleagues. Aurora provides an opportunity for women to influence their institutions and to develop leadership skills, which in turn supports them to progress to higher graded roles. Between 2014 and this reporting period 88 females have attended Aurora, 36 from professional services roles, and 52 from academic roles.
During the reporting period, the University has undergone a significant restructure with seven colleges and schools merging to form three faculties. As a result of ensuring positive action in this process, the representation of women across the Faculty Executive Teams is gender balanced.
Athena Swan
We are one of just 20 UK universities, and the only Welsh University, to hold an Athena Swan Silver Institutional Award. The accreditation recognises advancements of gender equality in terms of representation, progression and success for all.
During the 2020/21 reporting period we added to our Athena Swan success by achieving two further Bronze departmental awards for the department of Geography and the Computational Foundry. These achievements joined our other existing departmental awards; three silver in Engineering, Medicine and Human and Health Sciences, three bronze in Physics and Management and Bioscience.
Our Athena Swan action plans reinforce our commitment to equality in pay, including improving our gender pay gap.
Alongside our formal development programmes and schemes, the University places great importance on building women's confidence in the workplace. Whether that be through facilitating networking opportunities; providing mentorship; or encouraging staff-led support groups, we encourage everyone to get involved.
Our Academic Mentors continue to provide valuable support to fellow colleagues, and we’ve seen voluntary participation increase from 21 female and 18 male mentors in 2017/18 to a total of 88 female and 82 male mentors in 2020/21.
Despite the pandemic 2020/21 also saw a number of exciting virtual events take place across the University. Of particular note, was a programme of events to mark International Women’s day in March 2021, which included talks from leading female sports personalities; Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE, Professor Laura McAllister CBE, Tennessee Randall and Siwan Lillicrap, trailblazing female industry leaders; La-Chun Lindsay, Liz Johnson and Annemiek Ballesty Alsem and inspiring women who had succeeded against expectations; Jill Nalder and Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds OBE.
We want all colleagues to have the right work-life balance. We invest in our benefits and wellbeing package, which includes our flexible working and family-friendly leave arrangements.
In August 2019, we proudly became the first Welsh HEI to join the Employers for Carers membership programme. This offers access to a range of resources to help us support our staff who juggle work alongside caring responsibilities.
An agile working policy was introduced during the reporting period in response to the COVID19 pandemic. The policy was beneficial to female colleagues by increasing flexibility to manage work and personal commitments especially during national school closures. By continuing our commitment to ensuring staff have access to tools and resources to support their work-life balance, we hope to remove any barriers that might otherwise prevent people from reaching their full potential, regardless of their gender and life commitments.
Real Living Wage
We want all colleagues to have the right work-life balance. We invest in our benefits and wellbeing package, which includes our flexible working and family-friendly leave arrangements.
In August 2019, we proudly became the first Welsh HEI to join the Employers for Carers membership programme. This offers access to a range of resources to help us support our staff who juggle work alongside caring responsibilities.
An agile working policy was introduced during the reporting period in response to the COVID19 pandemic. The policy was beneficial to female colleagues by increasing flexibility to manage work and personal commitments especially during national school closures. By continuing our commitment to ensuring staff have access to tools and resources to support their work-life balance, we hope to remove any barriers that might otherwise prevent people from reaching their full potential, regardless of their gender and life commitments.
Leavers
The University Voluntary Severance Scheme remained open to colleagues that met the criteria throughout the reporting period. Analysis of colleagues who chose to leave the University via this scheme during the reporting period of April 1st 2020 and 31st March 2021 shows that the majority of women who chose to leave under this scheme were in lower graded roles and the majority of men who left were in higher graded roles, this therefore had a positive impact on closing the gender pay gap.
Recruitment and reward
We have taken steps to embed positive action when recruiting and remunerating senior academic and senior professional services colleagues. Enhancements were made using UCEA benchmarking guidance to award salary levels in line with sector or industry specific benchmarks. This process has already positively impacted on our gender pay gap and will continue to do so for years to come.
Looking Ahead
Since the reporting period of 2020/21:
Advance HE has recently announced that professional services departments now have the ability to apply for awards and we will therefore be actively encouraging our Professional Services Directorates to take the opportunity to submit for their own awards.
We really value our colleagues, and we know that they are at the heart of our success and ambitions. We are committed to providing them with a supportive environment that’s free from unfair discrimination and enables all staff to fulfil their personal potential, this includes reducing our gender pay gap.
We continue to be proactive and innovative in pursuing various activities to reduce the gender pay gap and to encourage more women to apply for senior roles. Our positive actions continue to deliver results and for the first time in the University history we have a gender-balanced Senior Leadership Team.
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Our reporting data on .gov.uk
2021/22 Gender Pay report data
2020/21 Gender Pay report data
2019/20 Gender Pay report data
2018/19 Gender Pay report data
