Addressing the
Gender Pay Gap

The following information aligns with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 (Section 147) as they relate to York St John University, by identifying any gender gaps in pay and bonuses. 

Gender Pay Gap data for 2024

At York St John University we are deeply committed to equality of employment and opportunity.  

Our data shows that we have equal pay for equal work. We operate a robust job evaluation process and grading system to measure all roles against the same criteria. This ensures fairness and consistency so that that women and men are paid equally for jobs of the same value. 

However, like many organisations, we have occupational segregation, which is a tendency for women or men to be over-represented in certain occupations. At York St John, women are over-represented in lower grades, such as student ambassador roles, and under-represented at higher grades, such as professor roles.  

Equal pay and gender pay gap reporting are not the same. The 'gender pay gap' is the difference in average earnings between women and men. It is the distribution of gender across different grades that is the primary contributing factor towards our mean pay gap of 12.1% and median pay gap of 18.6%. 

Academic staff pay gap

Our data for academic staff show that we have a mean gender pay gap of 3.34% across all academic colleagues at York St John. By comparison, the UK-wide mean gender pay gap for academic staff is 10.3% (HESA data 2022-23).  

Across the higher education sector, gender pay gaps remain highest among academic staff, though still evident among professional and support staff. At York St John, we see a different picture with a very marginal gender pay gap amongst our academic workforce and a slightly higher percentage of women than men in academic roles. 

Why do we have a Gender Pay Gap?

At the snapshot date of 31 March 2024, the workforce at the University comprised 60% female and 40% male employees. We had 1116 employees and a casual workforce of 289 (of which 62% are female). 

Positively, we have an equal number of men and women in senior leadership roles. However, we have more male professors, and a much higher number of women employed in lower grades, where part time work is more common and at the lower end of the pay structure. These, and other contributing factors, are outlined in more detail below.  

In-house teams

We are proud to have in-house cleaning and catering teams at York St John, which offer colleagues improved employment terms and conditions. These teams employ a higher number of women in lower paid roles. 

Student Ambassadors

We offer paid employment to our students who work as student ambassadors. Most of our student ambassadors are female which disproportionately increases the number of women on a lower rate of pay (although the University is a Real Living Wage Employer and pays above the national minimum wage for these student roles).

Salary sacrifice

We have a higher number of female colleagues accessing salary sacrifice schemes such as Childcare vouchers, which further reduces the average hourly rate of our female staff. 

Professors

We made good progress with the internal promotion of 8 female academic colleagues in the last four years, but they are currently employed towards the bottom of their pay scale. More male professors are already at the top of the pay band. Currently, we employ 19 male professors compared to 7 female professors, which has a significant impact on our gender pay gap. 

Contracts with enhanced payments

During the reporting period, we employed a higher proportion of men in specialised IT roles, who were paid an enhanced premium payment.   

What are we doing to eliminate our Gender Pay Gap?

As part of our commitment to tackling gender inequality, the University adopted the Athena SWAN Charter on International Women’s Day 2022. We hold an Athena SWAN bronze award for this framework to support and transform gender equality within higher education (HE) and research. We are currently implementing an action plan to embed gender equality actions into our policies, practices, and culture.  This includes overt actions such as supporting women leadership programmes, as well as addressing hidden inequalities. The University recently won a Breastfeeding Friendly University award for excellence in infant feeding support. 

York St John University became an accredited Real Living Wage Employer in April 2022. This is reviewed annually, and we’ve recently increased the hourly rate of all colleagues on lower grades to £12.65 per hour. This includes our Student Ambassadors, who are all paid above the national minimum wage.  

As part of our commitment to equality and inclusivity, the University has also taken the decision to uplift grades 1 to 4 (effective from 1 March 2025), following the increase in the Real Living Wage last year.  Due to the higher proportion of women within these grades this measure contributes to positive action in helping to address our gender pay gap. 

Since the 2024 reporting period, we have increased our average hourly rate for female staff from £19.76 to £20.77 per hour. 

Other actions we have taken or plan to take to address gender inequality and reduce the gender pay gap include: 

• Our promotions criteria provide a positive career pipeline for female professorships at the University. 

• We have run targeted recruitment campaigns to attract more male applicants to catering, cleaning and administration and roles. We have reviewed how we recruit to these lower grade roles by reviewing job titles and using tools to eliminate gendered language bias. 

• We continue to promote part-time and flexible working for senior roles and ensure measures are in place to support this. 

• We continue to work with our women’s staff network to address barriers to part-time working and career progression. 

• We continue to look at ways to develop career pathways across Professional and Student Services to support career development as part of our People and Culture action plan. This includes a newly launched Professional Services mentoring scheme. 

• The introduction of a Research Mentoring scheme which is aimed at supporting female academics through the research pathway. 

• Undertaking a review of workload, including academic workload planning, to ensure parity of workload allocation (Athena SWAN action plan) 

As one of very few universities with a female Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and Chair of Governors, we remain in a strong position to advocate for authentic and meaningful improvements to gender equality. Our ongoing work to address the gender pay gap is a fundamental part of our wider commitment to equality and inclusion.