Ranked: The gender pay gap of every Russell Group university this International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day and you can guarantee that each and every Russell Group uni has some kind of social media post planned where they speak all about how the uni is doing things to champion and empower women. This is all well and good, apart from the fact that every single Russell Group university pays men a lot more than women.

The average gender pay gap in the UK is 14.3 per cent. And whilst some universities mirror this figure, some are a lot lower and many a lot higher. The Russell Group with the lowest gender pay gap is the University of Sheffield with only a 3.31 per cent difference in pay. Sheffield’s pay gap has always been historically low, reducing from 4.36 per cent in 202o and 7.75 per cent in 2019.

But at the other end of the spectrum is London School of Economics with a huge mean pay gap of 24.74 per cent. This is 10 per cent higher than the overall national average. LSE is followed by Durham University and Liverpool, both at 21.1 per cent.

The gender pay gaps of each university are required to be made public every year. All the reports have been taken from the last available data in 2022 and refer to the mean average pay difference between men and women.

So, these are the gender pay gaps for all the Russell Group universities ranked from lowest to highest:

24. University of Sheffield – 3.31 per cent

23. University College London – 11.7 per cent

22. Glasgow University – 12.8 per cent

21. Imperial College London – 14.1 per cent

20. University of Manchester – 14.1 per cent

19. King’s College London – 15.1 per cent

18. University of Bristol – 15.5 per cent

17. University of Edinburgh – 15.27 per cent

16. University of Southampton – 16.2 per cent

15. University of Birmingham – 16.3 per cent

14. Queen Mary University of London – 16.3 per cent

13. University of Exeter – 16.6 per cent

12. University of Cambridge –  17.1 per cent

11. Cardiff University – 17.3 per cent

10. Queen’s University Belfast – 18.1 per cent

9. Newcastle University – 18.3 per cent

8. University of Leeds – 19 per cent

7. University of York – 19.1 per cent

6. University of Oxford – 19.6 per cent

5. University of Nottingham – 20.1 per cent

4. University of Warwick – 20.3 per cent

3. University of Liverpool – 21.1 per cent

2. Durham University – 21.1 per cent

1. London School of Economics – 24.74 per cent

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