Female staff are paid on average 20 per cent less than male staff at Newcastle University

International Women's Day – a day for celebrating the progress the female gender has made and for us to keep fighting for the equality they strive for.

Newcastle Uni have been fully on board with today, celebrating the day on a range of social media platforms and promoting events which have been going on around campus.

However, something which isn’t being advertised as widely is the gender pay gap for staff at Newcastle University.

In data released in a report by the university, it was shown that last year, males were paid, on average, £4 more per hour than female staff.

When the university pay was divided into four quartiles, only 37 per cent of women appeared in the highest quartile, compared to 63 per cent of men. This means almost two thirds of male staff landed in the highest pay bracket, whereas two thirds of females fell into the lowest quartile.

When it comes to bonuses, women really are being left behind. The average bonus for a male member of staff was 49 per cent higher than that of a female. The mean female bonus for 2016-17 was £7,329, in comparison with £14,949 for men. That's double!

The median gender pay gap for all companies, as published by the Office of National Statistics UK, is 18.7 per cent. Newcastle Uni comes in at higher than this, averaging at 20 per cent.

A Newcastle University spokesperson told The Newcastle Tab, "We have made considerable progress in recent years addressing the wide range of equality and diversity issues across the University. This has been recognised in achieving the Athena SWAN Silver Award for good practice on gender equality in 2016. We have also made steady progress in increasing the number of females professors who work here.

"However, the data shows the need to do much more to address our gender pay gap.

"Our Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Chris Day, established a Pay Equality Task and Finish Group to investigate the issues linked to pay equality in our University and to recommend a series of actions. One of these has been a revised approach in the professorial pay review round to enable faster progression of individuals though our professorial pay bands.

"We are also looking at how we can support more women to develop their careers, particularly into leadership positions. This includes offering 18 weeks paid maternity leave to help retain our female researchers which compares favourably to others in the sector."