Does The Number Of Women In Top Jobs Affect The Gender Pay Divide?

Does The Number Of Women In Top Jobs Affect The Gender Pay Divide?

May 18, 2021
Procurement

Through the creation of our report Procuring Inequality, we have analysed the proportion of women in the top jobs among the highest value procurement categories.

We did this by looking at the top quartile of employment, that is to say, the 25% highest paying jobs in organisations. Within this 25% of  ‘top jobs’ we look at the split between men and women.

The largest industry sector, Business Services, saw women in 41% of the top roles. Although seemingly positive and close to equality, the 9% gap from equality needs to be seen in the context of this being the largest sector, with a 13% pay gap against women. So while women are more equally represented in the Business Services sector than in some other sectors, they are less equally paid than even the national average pay gap at 11.47%.

The next largest categories, Construction and Architecture and Engineering collectively receive £133bn in contracting value. This means that in sectors that both enjoy £66-67bn in contracting value each, women are in 13% (Construction) and 20% (Architecture and Engineering) of the top quartile of employment. In other words, for Construction, only just over one in ten of the top jobs goes to women. For Architecture and Engineering, this figure is one in five.

In fact, a lack of representation of women is seen throughout much of the top 10 categories. With two exceptions, all sectors show a clear bias towards men for the top quartile of jobs. Of those 8 sectors that have a bias towards men, two sectors employed 30% or more women in top quartile jobs.

In Business Services and Research and Consultancy, women were in 41% and 35% of the top roles respectively.

The remaining 5 sectors have women in 25% or less of the top jobs. This means that for every 3 men in a top paying job there is 1 woman or less.

Software and related services have 1 woman for every 3 men at the top. IT services and Telecoms have just over 1 woman for every 4 men at the top.

These figures are concerning, and show that progress towards equality for women is unacceptably slow. There is an opportunity for the Government to examine the performance of its suppliers, and to ask for better performance against these figures.

To discuss with us your government procurement data needs,contact us here.

March 21, 2023

AUKUS Defence Procurement Deal

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the US President Joe Biden, and the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in San Diego this...
March 14, 2023

Australian Government Responds to COVID-19 Procurement Review

Many governments around the world have faced pressure regarding their procurement of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, so it is encouraging to see...
March 8, 2023

EU Joint Ammunition Procurement

EU ministers will meet today in Stockholm to decide whether to  jointly procure  ammunition to aid Ukraine and replenish domestic stockpiles. EU...
March 7, 2023

Denial Of Service By Wall Of Text

Clarkesworld Magazine is a publisher of science fiction short stories. They accept and pay for submissions from anyone. As of last week,...
March 1, 2023

Canadian Government Announces Rail Procurement Process

This week, the Canadian Government announced a major step in the procurement process for their High Frequency Rail project: the launch of...
February 28, 2023

Deduplication Routines

Deduplication is a deceptively complex problem to handle at scale. There’s a simple, ugly and brutal way to do it, where you...
February 23, 2023

Policy Proposal: Analysts In Place

Data is critical to the functioning of government. Policies and services live or die on the quality of data. Successes and failures...
February 23, 2023

Hallucination As A Service

I asked Chat-GPT to find me some academic papers that highlight the usefulness of combining two different machine learning techniques. I hoped...
February 20, 2023

Future Trends in Government Procurement

Over the years, government procurement has undergone significant changes, with new trends emerging that are reshaping the way governments buy goods and...
February 15, 2023

Making Your Own Export Platform?

If you are building your own export platform, sourcing, organising and analysing your data has its challenges. Here are some of the...
February 14, 2023

Tackling Modern Slavery in Supply Chains – Guidance

On 26 March 2020, the UK became the first country to publish a Government Modern Slavery Statement, setting out the steps government...
February 8, 2023

Securing The Competitive Edge.

Are you an exporter looking for leads for your exporters? Do you want to help your in-country teams build more partnerships within...
February 7, 2023

The Benefits of Data Tech 101

Government procurement, the process by which government entities purchase goods, services and works from private businesses, is being revolutionised by the integration...
February 1, 2023

EU Awards New Gas Aggregation Contract

In December 2022, EU energy ministers agreed to create a platform for the collective demand aggregation and joint procurement of gas, with...
January 25, 2023

Does Procurement Need Blockchain?

Blockchain is fundamentally a database, but rather than a database where one item is allowed to replace another, each change to the...

Newsletter

Compelling research, insights and data directly into your inbox.

Recent media stories

Search