Female graduates earn £2,500 less than men

FEMALE graduates from Scottish universities still earn less on average than their male counterparts, research has shown.

Women who graduated in 2013/2014 earned on average £2,500 less a year than males who finished university during the same period.

Men earned an average of £30,700 in 2019/20 compared to £28,200 for women, Scottish Government data shows.

Women had lower median earnings than men across 27 of 35 subjects surveyed for the research.

The largest difference was seen in pharmacology, toxicology and pharmacy, where men had median earnings of £36,200 compared to £31,500 for women.

Women only outperformed men in median earnings across six out of 35 subjects five years after graduation.

The largest difference was seen in media, journalism and communications, where women had median earnings of £25,600 compared to £23,400 for men.

The only subject where median earnings between men and women was equal – with graduates earning £25,300 – was in English studies.

The research says that earnings can ‘vary greatly between subject and sex’ because some subjects are more commonly studied by either men or women.

Graduates of high-earning subjects such as engineering are more likely to be men, whereas graduates of lowearning subjects such as nursing are likely to be women. Last night Scottish Conservative education spokesman Pam Gosal said: ‘These figures show just how much needs to be done to close the gender pay gap.

‘Even after discounting professions which attract many more of one sex, and are differently paid, there is still an unacceptable gap between male and female pay. The Scottish Government must take urgent action to set that right.’

The findings are consistent with 2012/13 research, where female graduates also earned on average £2,500 less than their male counterparts.

There was a slight reduction in the pay gap from 2011/12, where female graduates earned on average £3,000 less than male graduates during the same period.

Research by Scottish advocacy group Close the Gap has highlighted that between 2020 and 2021 there was a slight narrowing of Scotland’s gender pay divide from 10.4 per cent to 10.1 per cent.

Women working full-time earn 6.6 per cent less than their male counterparts, while part-time women earn on average 26.9 per cent less than men working fulltime, according to the research published this year.

It also showed 75 per cent of part-time workers in Scotland are women and 41 per cent of employed women are working part-time, compared with just 13 per cent of men.

The average gender pay gap in the European Union is 14.1 per cent and across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries it is 12.5 per cent.

‘Pay gap is unacceptable’