Saturday 8th March is International Women’s Day. *Jazz hands*. You can bet all the UK unis will be putting up shiny pink decorations and making social media posts about how much they apparently care about feminism. But even in 2025, literally every Russell Group uni has a gender pay gap and pays their female employees way less money than their male employees.
For context, the average gender pay gap in the UK in 2025 is still 14.4 per cent. University College London (UCL) should be crowned the most feminist Russell Group uni, because the gender pay gap there is by far the least bad, at 11.5 per cent. At the other end, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has the biggest gender pay gap. The female staff there earn a quarter less than the men.
The data for University of Birmingham, Imperial College London, and Newcastle University comes from reports they submitted to the Government’s gender pay gap service, and refers to the 2024/2025 academic year. The information for all the other Russell Group unis is from the year before that, because they haven’t sent a new report yet for 2025.
So, here are all the Russell Group unis ranked by how bad the gender pay gap is in 2025. The number is the mean percentage less money the female staff make than the male staff.
24. University College London (UCL) – 11.5 per cent
=22. University of Glasgow – 12.8 per cent
=22. University of Manchester – 12.8 per cent
21. King’s College London – 13.2 per cent
20. University of Sheffield – 13.5 per cent
19. University of Birmingham – 13.9 per cent
18. Queen Mary University of London – 14.0 per cent
17. University of Bristol – 14.4 per cent
16. Imperial College London – 14.8 per cent
15. University of York – 14.9 per cent
=13. University of Edinburgh – 15.3 per cent
=13. University of Exeter – 15.3 per cent
Exetaaaah girlies
(Credit: Caitlin Taylor)
12. Newcastle University – 15.5 per cent
11. Cardiff University – 16.3 per cent
10. University of Cambridge – 16.4 per cent
9. Queen’s University Belfast – 18.1 per cent
8. University of Leeds – 18.2 per cent
7. University of Nottingham – 19.0 per cent
=5. University of Oxford – 19.1 per cent
=5. University of Southampton – 19.1 per cent
4. Durham University – 19.6 per cent
3. University of Liverpool – 20.4 per cent
2. University of Warwick – 20.5 per cent
1. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) – 24.6 per cent
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Featured image of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) by Jonas Magnus Lystad via Creative Commons.
