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:
Supporting our female Academics
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.
Development & Personal Progression
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.
Mentoring, Networking & Events
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.
Work-life balance
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.