» 2% of student population is Black, 42.7% is White
» Gender pay gap at LSE is 19.9%, national average is 12.2%
» 23.6% of Professors at LSE are female
Data obtained by the Beaver shows that there is a sizeable disparity in the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students and staff, and an existence of a gender pay gap within the LSE.
In one of the two documents, it indicated that 2% of the School’s student population is Black, compared to a White student population of 42.7%. The other document stated that the gender pay gap is 19.9%, whereas the national average is 12.2%.
Entitled ‘Update on the School’s Diversity Profile’, the report states that only 5.8% of the School’s senior lecturers, 6.8% of professors and 2.1% of senior managers are from a BME background.
Furthermore, the School’s senior management cohort does not employ any UK BME staff.
It also names departments with particularly low numbers of BME senior academic staff including International Relations (0%), Sociology (3.8%), Social Policy (4.4%), Law (5.9%) and Economics (6.1%).
Only 1.2% of the School’s non-white student population is Black Caribbean students.
LSESU Education and Welfare Officer Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang, who is also Chair of Aldwych Group, the consolidated students’ union of the Russell Group universities, stated: “There is a dearth of representation of students from Widening Participation backgrounds in the Russell Group of research universities, so LSE is not alone in this respect. However for an institution founded on Fabian ideals, more needs to be done to improve on not just acceptance but application rates.”
More significant was the gender pay gap between female and male LSE staff, which was revealed at a Council meeting last week. Although 47.4% of the school’s employees are female, only 31.2% are members of senior management. Only 23.6% are professors and 27.6% are senior lecturers. The Finance department has the lowest percentage of female senior academic staff at 8.8%.
An ‘Equal Pay Audit’ was carried out by the Human Resources division of the LSE for the 2008-9 academic session. It mentioned that after Salary Band 6, “the number of male employees steadily rises compared to the proportion of female employees until the highest, Band 10, where the number of women is a third of the number of male employees”.
“The imbalance for off-scale employees is further exaggerated where the number of women is nearly a sixth of the number of male employees,” it further read. “…the data suggests that women are under-represented in all academic and senior management roles, and are over-represented in other support roles up to Salary Band 8 and research only roles.”
The pay gap for part time staff, 25.7% is also higher than that of full time staff, 17.9%, which is “causing further concern”.
More striking is the fact that the audit found men to be more likely to receive a higher starting salary than women, particularly at the higher ends of the pay scale. This was said to be attributed to “a higher than expected level of experience amongst the appointees”. A similar reason was adopted in respect to why there is a significant higher proportion of male employees in Salary Band 3, as “predominantly make security staff are situated in Band 3”.
Men were also found to be routinely claiming more overtime than “women deemed to be doing equal work”, particularly at Salary Band 4, where female claims per contract are 0.5 compared to 3.9 per contract in male claims. In terms to market supplements, the overall pay gap for all salary supplements is “much less favourable to women at 24.6%”.
LSE Enterprise Ltd payments are suggested as “proportionally significant” in contributing to the total remuneration gap. The LSE Enterprise payments for women constitute almost half as much as that for men.
Akpan-Inwang commented: “For a progressive institution line the London School of Economics to have such a stark gender pay gap is astonishing. There is no excuse for paying men and women who do exactly the same job different amounts of money. I can only hope that the LSE Council and senior administration will be taking immediate action on this issue.”
LSESU Women’s Officer Jessie Robinson, who is also organising Women’s Week this week, said: “This gender gap disparity is really embarasing for the LSE, and proves that there remains a great need to focus upon division of power between the genders in many spheres of work. Until women are equally represented in top jobs, there can never be true equality.”
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