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 18.4% 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 | 46% | 54% |
| Lower middle quartile | 40% | 60% |
| 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. For this reason, although the Government announced that organisations didn’t need to report on their gender pay gap for 2019/20, and that for 2020/21 reporting deadlines have been extended to October 5th (due to Covid-19) we have chosen to report in March both years, as usual. This decision allows us to retain our in-depth focus on gender equality and continue measuring our progress, despite the changes in the wider landscape.
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 33% increase in the total number of female academics promoted across all levels, from Lecturer through to Professor, between 2015 and 2020. This is an outstanding achievement. 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 23% in 2019/20.
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. PDR’s are in addition to our other development initiatives, such as our mentoring program, and for the last 8 years 99% of staff have completed their annual PDR.
Working alongside PDRs, our established 360 feedback process recognises the critical role our leaders play in achieving outcomes through our people. This plays a part in our bigger initiatives to support female colleagues working at grade 9 and above. Since 2012 the number of females working at grade 9 and above, in Professional Services, has more than doubled, representing 52% of this group in 2020.
We also invest in career development and training programs, to specifically assist in closing the gender pay gap. For example, we proudly offer the Aurora Leadership program 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.
We are one of just 18 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 2019/20 reporting period we sustained our Athena Swan achievements by renewing our silver departmental award for Medicine, and progressing our Engineering bronze to a silver award. These achievements joined our other existing departmental awards; two silver in Human and Health Sciences, and Bioscience; two bronze in Physics and Management.
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; running annual series, such as our Inspiring Women series Inspiring Women Series 2020; 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 44 in 2017 to 160 in 2020, with female mentors representing 53% of this group in 2020.
2019/20 also saw a number of exciting events take place across the University. Not least, the welcoming of Hillary Rodham Clinton, as guest of honour at the high-profile panel discussion entitled ‘Gutsy Welsh Women’. The event, chaired by Sky News journalist Anna Jones, had a 600-strong audience at the Great Hall on our state-of the-art Bay Campus. Mrs Clinton paid tribute to the women who have inspired her throughout her career, followed by members of the panel discussing the women who influenced their own careers.
We proudly support International Women’s Day and hold a number of activities each year in relation to this, but we also work hard to embed equality for all - including for women - in everything we do.
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.
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.
Looking Ahead
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.
Since the reporting period of 2019/20 we have been awarded two further Athena Swan bronze department awards for Computational foundry and Geography, bringing our current total to nine Athena Swan awards. We continue to support further award submissions.
In 2020 we proudly become an accredited Real Living Wage Employer. Although this advancement won’t yet be reflected in our data it’s an example of one of the active measures we are taking to address fairness in pay and we hope to see this change, and others, reflected in the data when we report on 2020/21.
Our reporting data on .gov.uk
2020/21 Gender Pay report data
2019/20 Gender Pay report data
2018/19 Gender Pay report data
