The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) has commissioned research to better understand the gender pay gap specific to engineering roles in the UK.
Their report includes the first dataset to quantify the gender pay gap specific to engineering roles, evidence on the underlying reasons for a gender pay gap in engineering and practical recommendations on how the gap can be closed.
To compile Closing the engineering gender pay gap, the first report of its kind for the engineering profession, the Academy commissioned WISE to analyse the pay data of nearly 42,000 engineers working in the UK, to approximate the gender pay gap for the engineering profession. This analysis, with data voluntarily provided by 25 engineering organisations of different sizes and from different sectors, excludes non-engineering roles to help identify issues and challenges specific to the profession. This approach differs from the mandatory gender pay gap reporting to government, which does not identify the professions of individuals in an organisation.
This research indicates that the gender pay gap is smaller in the engineering profession than the UK employee average. The mean (10.8%) and median (11.4%) pay gap for engineers in the sample analysed is around two thirds the national average.
Although the gap is less than feared, the report argues that closing it will take concerted effort within the engineering profession. This research confirms that underrepresentation of women in senior roles - rather than unequal pay - is the single largest cause of the gender pay gap for engineers. The factors that most contributed to pay variance for engineers in the sample included career level (40%), type of employer (12%), age (6%) and the annual revenue of the employer (5%). Just 9% of engineers in the top career grade in the sample were female and women accounted for only 8% of those in the upper pay quartile.