Gender pay gap: Women in IT paid 26% less than men, data reveals

In light of the recent scrapped government menopausal leave trial,External Link  it has become apparent that women continue to face barriers to progression in the UK workforce. This in combination with ongoing disparities in male and female pay, it is likely that women will seek out industries that treat them more fairly.

With this in mind, digital PR consultants RebootExternal Link sought to determine the industries that women are paid the least and most, compared to men. They did so by calculating gender pay gap differences based on the average gross hourly pay of men and women, using the latest data from the#2021-update"> Labour Force Survey (LFS)External Link.

Please find the full#gid=766882537"> data sheetExternal Link which details gender pay gap differences as well as representation of women in industries, female bonus data and % of females in a position of power.

Key findings

  • Out of the twenty sectors analysed, there are just three industries whereby women receive higher pay than men. These are activities of households as employers of domestic personnel, construction, mining and quarrying. 

  • In 80% of industries, men are paid more than women—the highest of this being the real estate industry whereby men are paid 31.12% more than women.

  • A quarter of industries pay men over 20% more than women. 

  • There were zero industries whereby men and women are paid equally, howeverthe sector that had the closest to equal pay with a 0.98% pay difference is “Activities of extraterritorial organisations and bodies”. This includes activities of international organisations, such as the IMF, the World Bank, the UN. 

Industries that women are paid the least, compared to men 

Industry Pay gap (%)
Real estate activities minus 31.12%
Information and communication minus 26.07%
Education minus 25.82%
Financial and insurance activities minus 22.81%
Accommodation and food service activities minus 21.82%
Public administration and defence; compulsory social security minus 19.59%
Administrative and support service activities minus 19.17%
Professional, scientific and technical activities minus 17.19%
Agriculture, forestry and fishing minus 17.15%
Human health and social work activities minus 13.37%

* for comprehensive industry descriptions see here. External Link

For a quarter of the industries analysed, men get paid at least 20% more than women. These are real estate activities, IT, Education, financial and insurance activities. The industry that has the biggest gender pay gap is ‘real estate activities’, whereby women receive a whopping 31.12% less than men. This sector is described as Activities of real estate investment trusts which includes buying, selling and renting own real estate. 

There are great gender disparities within the IT industry since women represent just 30.31% of the workforce and there is a severe imbalance on male and female pay—with women getting paid 26.07% less than men. The education sector, whereby women represent 69.71% of the workforce, has a shocking 25.82% gender pay difference. The financial sector has a much more equal balance of female to male representation, with women representing 44.04% of the workforce, yet women are still paid a whopping 22.81% less than men. 

 Industries that women are paid the most, compared to men

Industry Pay gap (%)
Activities of households as employers of domestic personnel  plus 36.94%
Construction plus 17.68%
Mining and quarrying plus 9.64%

The industry with the best pay for women compared to men is Activities of households as employers of domestic personnel, with a whopping 36.94% pay increase compared to men. This industry includes jobs such as maids, cooks, gardeners and babysitters—and women represent 72.31% of the workforce. Following this is the construction, mining and quarrying industries whereby women are also paid more than men, on average. In the construction industry, it is unsurprising thatfemales represent just 14.66% of workers, but what is surprising is that women get paid 17.68% more than men on average. Tasmyn Brittain, who works in construction provided some comments on her experiences working in the industry:

“I chose construction as there were very few women within the industry so I wanted to be able to break that barrier, and also knew that within the construction industry there is plenty of space to move up the ranks and learn as much as possible. However, there is a slight surprise if I turn up on a building site - most men seem taken aback to see a woman on site in full PPE. I’m definitely outnumbered in the office in terms of women versus men. A lot of the women in construction, or at least my place of work tend to be in admin or HR roles, rather than physically working in the factories or on site.”  

Industries that have the worst female representation

Industry Female representation (%)
Construction 14.66%
Transportation and storage 21.54%
Mining and quarrying 25.14%
Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply 25.18%
Water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities 26.79%
Manufacturing 27.12%
Activities of extraterritorial organisations and bodies 27.72%
Agriculture, forestry and fishing 28.73%
Information and communication 30.31%
Financial and insurance activities 44.04%

As well as the gender pay gap being a barrier to female success, there are major disparities in female representation across industries. In eight of the twenty industries analysed, less than 30% of the workforce are women. The industries with the worst female representation (%) are the construction, transport and storage, and mining and quarrying industries. 

Methodology 

  1.  Digital PR consultants RebootExternal Link conducted this study with the aim of identifying industries with the best and worst gender pay gaps. This study analyses quarterly data estimates from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for July to September 2022 based on a sample of 69437 individuals.

  2. The dataset was sourced from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which conducts studies of the employment circumstances of the UK population through the The Labour Force Survey (LFS).

  3. Our sample was filtered by employment status focusing on employees, self-employed, government scheme and unpaid family workers.

  4. An index was constructed to measure and identify industries with most female representation, proportion of females in high positions compared to men (Managers, Directors and Senior Officials), the % of women in each industry that are in a position of power, the number of  females that received bonuses, and lowest gender pay gap.

  5. The gender pay gap difference has been calculated based on the average gross hourly pay and taking into account the female and male average hourly pay.

  6. The LFS data was collected on a sample of population, to convert this information to give estimates for the population, the *Weighting variables provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) along with the LFS dataset itself have been used.

  7. The category ‘Other Service Activities industry’ was excluded due to its broad nature.

* weighting variables are PWT20 and PIWT20 for person weight and person wage weight. For each row in raw data, the weight can be thought of as the number of people with those attributes.

* The average hourly pay for women has been subtracted by the average hourly pay for men and divided by the average hourly pay for women.kl