Massey continues to make strides towards decreasing the gender wage gap

The report, part of a review jointly initiated by the university and the Tertiary Education Union, compares data from 2009 with the same data from 2019 and 2020. The aim of the review is to monitor the university’s progress in reducing the overall gender pay gap, as well as within specific occupational groups and grades, and improving the representation of women at senior levels of the university.

While the gap overall has decreased marginally, from 21.5 per cent to 18 per cent, there has been significant and encouraging progress in key areas as the university addresses the factors contributing to the gender wage gap.

When the first assessment was done in 2009, the gender wage gap at 21.5 per cent, was identified as a primary concern. While this has been reducing overall in recent years, there are groups where this is not the case. Amongst general staff the gap has decreased by seven per cent to 10.25 per cent, however at 15.76 per cent in 2020 a small increase of 1.86 per cent has occurred amongst academic staff.

Some of the resulting improvements include a significant increase in the percentage of senior roles held by women from 24 per cent in 2009 to 55 per cent in 2020. Along with higher participation and success rates of women academics at all levels up to and including Associate Professor. The percentage of women in the top general staff pay grades has also risen from 13 per cent in 2009 to 20 per cent in 2020.

To support this, the Equal Employment Opportunities Policy was updated to include more specific information about the university’s aims to eliminate employment inequality (see bullet points four and eight of the policy).

In addition, the investment in unconscious bias training has been undertaken with academic promotion panels. This is now mandatory and appears to be supporting positive progress.

Other key findings include:

• There is no obvious gender difference in pay for Associate Professors.
• More women than men were promoted to Associate Professor in 2018, which sets up a strong pipeline effect for more women to move to Professor.
• Women in Professorial roles increased from 16 per cent in 2009 to 28 per cent in 2020.
• In two general staff pay grades, women earned on average more than men in the same grades.
• Women comprised 65 per cent of all new appointments made to Grade H/I general staff appointments between 2009 and 2020.

Further areas of focus moving forward include efforts towards promoting academic women and Māori, as well as a concentrated effort towards the achievement of parity in Colleges such as Business and Science.

Read the PaEE 2019-2020 update report here (Please note: this report was released in November 2022).