City’s gender pay gap laid bare Male workers earn 17% more than women
THE scale of the difference between men’s and women’s pay in Birmingham has been revealed in new figures.
The city has a smaller gender pay gap than the nationwide average – but being a man could still earn you 17 per cent more than women.
Statistics revealed that male Birmingham workers earn an extra £1.78 an hour on average – but the chasm between male and female earnings in Birmingham is still better than the national figure of 23 per cent.
The figures showed men living in the Second City earned the equivalent of £12.17 an hour, on average, while women made just £10.39.
Across the UK, though, men earned an hourly wage of £13.46, while women earned £10.94 in comparison.
A factor in the gender divide is the number of men and women in full-time work compared to parttime employment, experts claim.
In Birmingham, 82 per cent of working men have full-time jobs, while 41 per cent of women in the city work part-time.
Across the UK, women are far more likely to work part-time than men – in large part due to expectations surrounding childcare – and these positions are usually lower paid.
Jemima Olchawski, head of policy and insight at the Fawcett Society, the UK’s leading gender equality charity, said of the findings: “The moral case for gender equality should be enough alone to motivate us to speed up the pace of change, but with evidence suggesting that improving gender equality could add £150 billion to our GDP it’s also clear that we simply can’t afford to wait.”
But some areas in the country fared much worse than the Midlands for unequal pay. In Allerdale in Cumbria, for example, men earn 69 per cent more than women.
Only five areas saw the gender gap work the other way – South Buckinghamshire, Denbighshire and Conwy in Wales, Hackney in London and Rossendale in Lancashire all saw women earn slightly more.
The figures came just a month after the World Economic Forum claimed that women would not reach global parity with men for 170 years. In its tenth Global Gender Gap Report, it calculated that the world would not eliminate the gender gap until 2186.
UNIVERSITY of Birmingham bosses have been urged to honour the memory of its founder Joseph Chamberlain and pay 513 contract cleaning and support staff the real Living Wage of £8.45 per hour.
Members of trade union Unison were joined by more than 20 cleaners for a protest outside the university’s new £60 million library this week calling for fair pay.
And they were backed by local historian Carl Chinn who said that raising the wages of the poorest paid would respect the organisation’s heritage.
He said: “As one of the largest employers in Birmingham and as an institution founded by Joseph Chamberlain, who strove to improve the welfare and well-being of workingclass people, the University of Birmingham should shine out as a beacon of good practice by paying the real Living Wage to the 513 staff who are paid below that level.
“It is deeply upsetting, then, that the university does not shine out as such a beacon, all the more so as it could not function without the skills, dedication and hard work of those 513 workers. Their essential contribution should be recognised and valued by immediately paying them the real Living Wage.”
Unison claimed that more than a fifth of the university’s 2,435 support staff are paid too little to live on and some rely on grants from the union to cover basic bills.
It pointed out that the university has income of £577 million per year and its vice-chancellor, David Eastwood, earns more than £400,000 per year.
The protest also had the backing of local council committee chairman Karen McCarthy (Lab, Selly Oak) who said: “From an income of over £577 million they should be paying all their staff a wage they can live on.”
The university said that the lowest pay rate is currently £7.85 per hour, 65p above the legal minimum wage. But it added that the pay is under annual review and any pay award would be backdated to August.
A spokesman added: “The university employs more people than any private sector employer in Birmingham and we are proud of our record of employment and remuneration.
“In addition to pay, all members of staff enjoy generous holiday, sick pay and pension arrangements.
“The university also offers a broad range of working patterns to help staff combine their career aspirations with their responsibilities outside work.”