UoN pays female staff 23 per cent less than men. Happy International Women’s Day!

It's International Women's Day and UoN have been keen to spread the word, with the uni's social media accounts firing off #empowering tweets, and the uni highlighting a portrait photography project of inspirational women it's doing to tie in with the day.

Less attention has been paid to the gender pay gap at the university.

Female staff at Nottingham University last year were paid 23.6 per cent less than the male counterparts working in professional services, part-time, or academic work.

Whilst Nottingham University employs 4,225 female staff (54 per cent), as compared to 3,650 male staff (46 per cent), female staff are 53 per cent less likely to incur a bonus at the end of the academic year.

The University's lowest pay quartile, divided into four equally sized quartiles, is dominated by female staff (67.2 per cent); the highest pay quartile is unequally represented by male staff (62.1 per cent).

The Equalities Act 2010, which came into force April 2017, requires all public sector organisations, including university bodies, to publish their results of gender pay against six prescribed indicators, including mean and medium averages.

Nottingham University's gender pay gap of 23.6 per cent is greater than the median figure for all companies of 18.7 per cent, published by the Office of National Statistics UK.

In a published report documenting the University's gender pay gap, Vice-Chancellor Shearer West commented that she is "personally invested in ensuring that the University of Nottingham remains fully committed to meeting our values of inclusivity and diversity."

She commented that flexible hours and practices at Nottingham "encourages more women to further their career within [the] University, and supports women returning to work on a flexible basis, or taking on caring responsibilities where they need to do so."

Notts SU's Equal Opportunities officer was "not able" to comment for The Nottingham Tab about the uni's gender pay gap.

A spokeswoman for The University Of Nottingham said: “We are committed to the principle of equal pay for work of equal value for all employees and take any level of inequality extremely seriously.

"We have worked very hard in recent years to tackle this through regular equal pay reviews, initiatives to support more women into senior roles, and monitoring of our recruitment experience but we acknowledge that there is still some way to go.”

To celebrate International Women's Day, the University have organised lectures and seminars by prominent female lecturers to speak on women roles in engineering, chemistry, and business, feminism in the workplace, and inspiring women to achieve more.

Zoe Mackenzie, Equal Opportunities, was reached and declined to speak to The Nottingham Tab for this story.