Intersectional Pay Gaps 2023
The University recognises that everyone has their own unique, interconnected, set of circumstances that impact them. A person’s advantages or disadvantages in work or in life can’t be explained with reference only to their ethnicity or their gender, but by the totality of all factors. Therefore, although there is no statutory duty to analyse or report on intersectional pay gaps, the University has chosen to begin from this year to consider and report on this. Further breakdown of the 2023 data can be found in Appendix G.
Gender and Ethnicity Pay Gap
| Gender | Ethnicity | Median % | Mean % |
| Female |
Asian | -3.9 | 4.2 |
| Black | 4.9 | 7.0 | |
| Mixed | 10.2 | 13.3 | |
| Other | -12.2 | 3.4 | |
| Male | Asian | -8.4 | -0.6 |
| Black | -2.1 | 11.5 | |
| Mixed | -4.1 | -4.1 | |
| Other | -4.2 | -0.7 |
The gaps above are compared to White employees within the same gender group, e.g. comparing median pay for Asian women to median pay for White women. The median pay for men of all four ethnic groups is higher than the median pay of White men, while for women, two of the ethnic groups have higher average pay compared to White women and two lower. Due to the difference in median pay between Professional Support and Academic Staff, and the greater proportion of Professional Support staff who are women, increasing the ethnic diversity of Professional Support staff is likely to increase these intersectional pay gaps. It is recognised that given the small numbers of colleagues from BAME backgrounds, particularly in Professional Support roles, many of these gaps may be subject to significant year on year change.
9. A boxplot summarising pay and pay gaps for the intersection of gender and ethnicity, by employee type, 2023
View the intersectional pay gap image in an accessible format.
Benchmarking data on the intersection of gender and ethnicity is available from the 2022-23 UCEA intersectional pay gap survey. Northumbria University’s 2022 median ethnicity pay gap by gender was -3% for men (all ethnic minorities compared to White) and 12.5% for women. This compares to a 2022 sector median ethnicity pay gap by gender of 4.6% for men and 14.9% for women.
