According to a new study by the HR and payroll software company Ciphr, two thirds of UK jobs that have a majority female workforce are dominated by men.
Ciphr’s study on gender pay gaps, based off the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) latest statistics, found that the majority (70%) of female-dominated jobs with over 50,000 workers have a pay gap.
Only 3% of occupations where women are more prevalent than men (60 % or greater vs 40 %) do not have gender pay gaps. A quarter of these roles (27%) show pay gaps in favour of women.
Office managers, lawyers and solicitors, marketing and commercial managers and financial account managers are some of the most common jobs that have a median pay gap of more than 10%. These roles are held by 380,700 men and 206,800 women, but the gender pay gap ranges from 13,4% to 18,4% in favor of men. Men in these roles earn an average of more per hour than women doing similar work.
Some other jobs with large gender pay gaps are residential, day, and domiciliary caregivers and owners (including managers of care homes, community centres, and welfare housing managers) and educational professionals (roles within this group include bursars and university administrators as well as academic tutors and learning support officers in higher education). These occupational groups have average gender pay gap of 14.8% and 14.4%.
There is a 4,7% pay gap between men and women who work as office administrators, clerical/admin staff, or clerical/admin clerks. This is despite the fact that 78% of all employees are women. With nearly half a milllion (452,800 female employees), it’s the third most common job type for women. After care workers (and at-home carers) and retail assistants are also in high demand.
These hourly wage disparities (the average gender gap for all workers at the moment is 13.1%) can accumulate over a woman’s career, potentially resulting in gender pay gaps of thousands of pounds and impacting her final pension savings.
This is not surprising, given that according to Ciphr, three quarters of all occupations will have a pay gap between men and women in 2024. The trend also applies to most (82% of) job roles where men are the majority. 85% of roles with a relatively balanced workforce are also women-dominated.
Claire Williams, Chief People and Operations Officer at Ciphr says that the UK’s stubbornly large, double-digit gender pay gap (13.1%) reflects systemic problems that cannot be overlooked. It is not only about fairness, but also about equity, engagement and trust at work. Employers need to do more to identify and eliminate the causes of these disparities. This includes recruitment practices, career advancement and salary review processes.
Even organisations that have not yet reached the reporting threshold for their gender pay gaps should still conduct annual DEIB and gender pay gap reports. It allows them to gain a deeper understanding of the gaps, and where to concentrate their efforts in order to close them. Employers can close the gender gap by taking concrete and measurable steps.
The careers that will have the largest gender pay gap in 2024 for women are:
- Pay gap for financial accounts managers of 18.4%
- Managers and owners of residential, day and domiciliary homes: 14.8%
- Other education professionals: 14.4%
- Marketing and commercial managers: 13,6%
- Office Managers: 13.4%
- Solicitors: 13.4%
- Business associate professionals (including planning assistants, project coordinators and business system analysts): 11.3%
- Professionals in business and related research: 11.1%
- Public Relations professionals: 10.7%
- Other health professionals: 8.6%
- Education managers: 8,4%
- Record clerks and assistants 8.3%
- Bookkeepers, Payroll Managers and Wage Clerks: 7%
- Nurse practitioners: 6.9%
- Cleaning and housekeeping supervisors and managers: 6.9%
These stats stand in stark contrast to recent survey results, which revealed that just 8% of UK employees think their job has a gender pay gap in favour of men (source: https://www.ciphr.com/infographics/gender-pay-gap-statistics-2024#survey).
Ciphr’s gender pay gap report, including gender pay gap data by occupation, industry, and major towns and cities, is available at https://www.ciphr.com/infographics/gender-pay-gap-statistics-2024.
The ONS provided all data on gender pay gaps. This is based off the latest provisional datasets released for full-time, part-time employees but not for self-employed individuals.
Ciphr, the UK’s leading provider of HR solutions and software for large and medium-sized organisations, is the preferred partner in the UK. Its integrated software, services, and content in the areas of HR, payroll and benefits, learning, and recruitment provide HR teams with valuable insights that help them to develop and grow their organisation. Ciphr, based in Reading is on a quest to amplify the voice and value HR by providing intelligent solutions for people data. This will help HR be heard in the boardroom as well as across the organisation.
Visit www.ciphr.com for more information.
The first time this post appeared was on Human Resources News.
