King’s has the biggest gender pay gap of any UK University

Photo: Anthony O’Neil

The statistics cover all academic staff including Professors, Lecturers and Research Professors.  

King’s College London has a gender pay gap of 17.74%, the biggest of any large UK University, according to official data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

On average, women were paid £10,061 less than male academic staff.

The College surpassed last year’s second-place position, followed shortly by the University of Aberdeen, who maintains a 17.63% pay difference between male and female employees, in a new analysis by Times Higher Education. 

The statistics come after the University of Essex announced a salary hike for female professors, in an attempt to eliminate the pay gap.

It was revealed last month that King’s had spent around £250,000 in legal bills, in order to prevent the publication of senior staff pay. The ruling exempts them from section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, on the grounds of the University’s ‘commercial interests’.

Speaking at a London HR Connection event this month, Janet Walsh, Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations at King’s, said “People regularly state that women in the UK earn 20 per cent less than men, but they’re not talking about women doing the same job at the same grade.”

She added: “In the academic world, when seniority, experience and productivity were accounted for, there was virtually no difference between the sexes”.

According to a report by the Government Equalities Office, the national gender pay gap stands at around 19%.

A College spokesperson said “King’s is taking the gender pay gap seriously and we are actively working to address the situation.”

“The issue arises primarily in our clinical and professorial roles, where women are under-represented at the most senior levels in a number of, but not all, Faculties.”

King’s has pledged to make “a record investment in our enhanced parenting leave fund, mandatory unconscious bias training, women’s professional and leadership development programmes, mentoring schemes and rolling out inclusive leadership training.”