Cambridge attacked over gender pay gap

CAMBRIDGE University has come under fire after revealing that less than one in seven of its top paid staff are female.

Of the 123 employees who earn more than £140,000 a year only 17 are women, according to figures released after a Freedom of Information request.

The gender pay gap was criticised by Daniel Zeichner, the Labour MP for Cambridge.

He said: ‘I’m not surprised but it’s still shocking. It’s important the university looks at it.’

The university said its highest paid employee was paid £440,344 – more than 30 times the £12,873 salary of the lowest paid and more than 13 times its average pay. In the year to July 31, 201 just over half the university’s employees were female, but they were paid on average about a fifth less than men.

And although the university is an equal opportunities employer, only 11 of the 31 masters of its colleges are women. A university spokesman said the ‘overall gender pay gap at Cambridge continues to fall year on year’.

The figures emerged weeks after it was revealed that women at the BBC make up only a third of the corporation’s top earners.