By Charlotte Webster-
Women should fight to raise their earnings where possible and fight to reverse the growing trend of a gender pay gap in the Uk.
Recently released statistics that the gender pay gap has widened over three consecutive years is a troubling reality that should be confronted. Whilst revealing a continued undesirable gender gap, the data presents the cause of the gap between male and female student’s future earnings to their family background and earlier performance at school. .
This tends to suggest that men come from stronger backgrounds than women and do better in school, which is not true. There is no excuse for a gender pay gap that continues to grow, perhaps all women in the Uk should get a pay rise to level earnings on average. That will be dreaming, a dream that can come true for every woman who believes they have good reason to request a wage rise.
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The figures from the government’s database of graduate employment and earnings reveal that pay for men continues to be higher than their female counterparts after their undergraduate degrees. The pay gap widened each year between 2014 and 2017, according to the figures.
In the 2014-15 fiscal year, the gap in median earnings stood at £2,900, with men earning an average of £27,000 five years after graduation and women on £24,100. But the following year the pay gap widened to £3,300, and then to £3,600 in 2016-17, with men’s earnings increasing by more than double those of women.
The data also shows that men earn more than women at all stages in the decade after graduation, with male earnings 8% higher after one year, 15% after five years, and 31% higher at 10 years after graduation. Expert analysts say the gap is partly caused because of more women in part-time work, and more going on to university. A higher percentage of men pursue work after school instead of University. This could be a factor in the equation widening the gender pay gap, it’s still no excuse
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At least, wherever women are found earning less than man of similar professional experience, they should ask for the gap to e bridged to guarantee fairness. The challenge women who try this could face is the fact that contractual arrangements with individual companies and organisations are legally binding and independent of other arrangements between other employees and their bosses elsewhere. In the same organisation by the same boss, it must never happen.
The pay figures confirmed previous data showing that courses such as economics, medicine and dentistry were among the best paid, while humanities and creative arts and design were among the lowest.
The figures also suggest that the trajectory of a graduate’s earnings are set by not just their gender but also their social background and family circumstances, as well as their exam results before going onto higher education.
Among different ethnic groups, black Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi graduates all earned less than white, Chinese or Indian ethnicity graduates. Pakistani graduates earned £6,000 a year less than white graduates a decade after finishing their undergraduate degrees.
Students with the best school results went on to earn the highest amounts after graduation, and their earnings grew at a faster rate than their peers. Those with three As or similar at A-level earned £5,000 more a year after graduation than those with B and C grades or less, and over £7,000 more than those with lower than three Cs.
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the Office for Students, said: “It is good to see that in general graduate earnings continue to rise – although gaps remain between more and less disadvantaged groups.”
The Department for Education noted that “financial outcomes are just one of the considerations for students when choosing a degree subject, as students will make career choices not solely based on a likely graduate salary”.
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