Universities must tackle the big ethnicity pay gap | Laurence Hopkins

Minority ethnic staff are stuck on the lowest rungs of the career ladder. They need more opportunities to rise up

Would you be surprised to read that women may earn more on average than men in higher education? If you've followed gender pay gap reporting over recent years, it's an improbable statement. Yet one of the findings of our research on pay differences in universities is that white women earn more than black men.

This is not a statistical magic trick, but the results of an intersectional analysis of pay, which looks at gender and ethnicity together rather than in isolation. With ethnicity pay gap reporting on the horizon, organisations could be required to shine a light on differences in the pay of minority ethnic and white staff in a similar fashion to gender pay gap reporting. The numbers will not be pretty, but at least they will encourage ongoing work to improve the situation.