Earlier this month, data provided by thousands of British companies proved that men are still paid significantly more money than women.

Changes to the Equality Act in April 2017 made it compulsory for companies with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay gap figures at the end of every financial year. Surely, this puts a prevalent pressure to significantly reduce the gap? And yet, further research released by the Education for Department on Thursday (25 April) only confirms how little progress is being made.   

The new DfE figures show that women who held postgraduate degrees in 2018 earned an average annual salary of £37,000. The same report shows that men with first-class honours Bachelor degrees earned an average annual salary of £38,500. This means that women with master’s degrees and doctorates earned around £1,500 less than men without one.

And it gets worse.

Males who did hold a post graduate degree earned an average annual salary of £43,000 – that’s a maddening £6,000 gender pay gap with female counterparts. 

On the whole, the average salary of all graduates with postgraduate degrees was £40,000, which means that females were paid £3,000 under average. 

Nope, it still doesn’t stop there either.

The gender pay gap also widened among all university graduates aged under 30. In 2009 both male and female graduates earned £24,000 on average. Since then the median earnings for women have barely changed, rising to £24,500 in 2018. Meanwhile, men’s earnings have increased to an average of £28,000. This means that female graduates in 2018 earned substantially less than they did a decade ago. *Heavy sigh* It’s clear that, while employment rates for men and women are higher since the financial crisis, male graduates have benefited far more from the slow recovery in pay.

A closer look at the new information finds even more infuriating yet, again, unsurprising news. Graduates of all ages up to 64 earned a median salary of £34,000, with black graduates receiving median earnings of £25,500 and white graduates earning £35,000.

There is some good news, though. Employment rates are higher than in previous years for both men and women. 

Images: Pixabay and Shutterstock