'The gender pay gap amongst high educated workers' - Arthur Lewis Lecture
Join us for the Annual Arthur Lewis Lecture as our guest speaker Dame Rachel Griffith, Professor of Economics, reflects on the gender pay gap, and why it is still so prevalent in highly skilled work.
The extent to which males are paid more than females (the gender pay gap) has declined considerably over the past several decades, but much more so for workers in low paid jobs. The gender pay gap for highly skilled workers is still high at over 15% in the UK in 2025. Differences in pay can be a concern for both equity and efficiency reasons. It is not fair if people are being paid differently for the same work, and it is inefficient if similarly skilled workers do not face similar incentives to work. The gender pay gap could reflect many different factors, including the possibilities that women face different time constraints than men, make systematically difference choices when faced with the same incentives, have different expectations and behave differently, or are discriminated against.
In this lecture Rachel will discuss recent work that considers these issues by studying the gender pay gap in UK academia. The gender pay gap amongst research active academics remains high. Females are less present in higher paid disciplines and in senior positions, and women who make it into higher positions receive on average lower pay. However, the gender pay gap varies markedly across disciplines, from effectively zero in media studies and sociology, to over 15% in economics, medicine and psychology.
Women also publish fewer academic papers on average. We compile new data that allows us to learn about how the differences in publications relate to differences in pay between men and women working in the same discipline, and to differences across disciplines. Differences in publications explain up to half of the gender pay in some disciplines, but very little in others.
Speaker
Dame Rachel Griffith
Role: Professor of Economics
Organisation: University of Manchester
Travel and Contact Information
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Theatre B
Roscoe Building
Manchester
