2024 Gender Pay Gap Report

At Essex we are committed to addressing inequity and building an inclusive environment where all members, regardless of their gender, can succeed. Our commitment to reducing our gender pay gap is unwavering as we nurture our commitment to supporting every person in our university community to achieve their full potential, and reducing our pay gaps continues to remain an institutional priority. In line with our statutory duties, and to measure our progress, we monitor our gender pay gap annually and this year we are pleased that our mean gender pay gap has continued to reduce, reaching 14.97%. There has been an increase in the proportion of women at grade 9 which has now passed 50% and this, along with the reduction in proportion of women in grades 1-4, has contributed to the continued reduction of our mean gender pay gap.

It is encouraging to see a positive shift in our median gender pay gap which has reduced to 16.8% after remaining at 18.6% for the last three years, but it is important to note that our median pay gap is more susceptible to change because the median point for men is close to the point where the hourly rate changes and even a small change in our population can impact the median pay gap. We are incredibly pleased to report that our mean bonus pay gap has seen a notable reduction to 7.6% having previously been 19.46% and there continues to be no significant evidence that overall women are paid less for men for work of equal value as the majority of gaps by grade are within the +/-5% range.

Take a look at full details of our Gender Pay Gap and find out more about our commitment to pay equality.

Ethnicity and disability pay gaps

This year the mean ethnicity pay gap was 6.39% in favour of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity staff as at 31 March 2023. This positive gap arises because the majority of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnicity staff are employed within academic posts and hence would sit on the upper end of the pay scale (Grades 7-11). The disability pay gap is 1.13% in favour of those with a disability compared to colleagues who have not disclosed a disability, however we note that more needs to be done to increase disclosure rates for both ethnicity (17%) and disability (53.5%) within our staffing population as the figures do not reflect the entire population. We will continue to raise awareness through our “Your Profile Counts” campaigns which includes regular communication and targeted departmental outreach, and recommendations from our Equality Pay Gaps Working Group and actions from both our Race and Gender Equity Action plans.

How we will continue to work towards reducing our gender pay gap

As part of our ongoing commitment to reduce our gender pay gaps, we will continue with a range of actions which will positively contribute to women’s experience at work and help to reduce our gender pay gap which include: the use of positive action statements as standard in roles advertised (where appropriate); the continued delivery of academic promotion and bonus workshops; delivery of newly designed recruitment selection training for managers which will include gender pay gap considerations; providing recruiting managers with gender pay gap data to information decision making at offer stage. This has been a long established process for appointments to grade 11 posts, which has more recently been implemented for appointment at other grades. We also plan to introduce a review of longitudinal data for women across the university to see if their continued services has contributed to the gender pay gap.

Contact us

If you have any ideas on what you would like us to consider in reducing our gender pay gap, please contact us on inclusion@essex.ac.uk.