UK Pays Female IT Pros A Third Less

Senior female IT professionals in the UK are still paid up to 30 percent less than male counterparts despite years of campaigning over gender salary scales according to the latest research.

The report released this week, the Women in IT Scorecard, published by UK user organisations and trade bodies BCS, e-skills and Intellect, claims there is still a significant pay gap between male and female IT professionals. For young professionals aged 16 to 29, the gap is around 14 percent but this increases to 30 percent for women aged 40 to 49.

The report also showed that IT is still not attracting enough female workers. Women represent 45 percent of the UK working population but only 19 percent of the IT professional workforce. The UK lags behind Italy and Ireland when it comes to the percentage of female workers in IT-related roles.

“The gender imbalance in IT is a deep and persistent issue that cannot be put right by one organisation alone. We must work together; employers, government and education all have an important role to play,” said Karen Price, chief executive of e-skills UK.

The Women in IT Scorecard also claimed that although the number of females taking IT related qualifications in secondary education are low, women consistently outperform their male counterparts. “It can be presumed, therefore, that if females were more inclined to participate in IT careers then the pool of talent available to IT employers might improve noticeably,” the report stated.

Stephen Carter, UK minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, said that the recent interim Digital Britain Report showed the importance of IT for helping the development of UK businesses and encouraging more women to participate in the technology industry was an important step. “Twenty two million UK employees use IT every day and we need a skilled and diverse IT workforce to support them. There’s more to be done to strengthen the ways business, education and government work together to nurture the IT leaders that business needs, and we will be working with the Sector Skills Councils to develop some action points for the final Digital Britain report.”