Generally, workplace equality is all about making sure both men and women are paid equally for doing the same job. In fact, there are many factors that contribute to creating a fair and equal environment where everyone has the same chance to succeed and do their best work.
In a recent development, Hired, a career marketplace has published its inaugural study ‘The UK Tech Workplace Equality Report’ that reveals pay discrepancy and discrimination experienced by the UK tech workforce.
Surveyed 1,300 UK tech workers!
The information in the report was gathered by analysing real salary data from real job offers from its UK recruiting marketplace and surveyed over 1,300 UK tech workers in order to better understand the experiences of people across genders, ages, sexual orientation, race, roles and those who are neurodiverse in UK tech.
Diverse group experiences discrimination!
According to the report, all diverse group experiences an element of discrimination in UK tech. In addition to it, those belong to more than one diverse group go through worse harassment – LGBTQIA+ women and non-white neurodiverse people in particular. Furthermore, nearly 38% of all workers suffer from imposter syndrome.
Women in UK tech are offered 4% less salary!
Women in the UK tech are offered 4% less salary than on average than men. Having said that, its an improvement over last year when the gap was 5%. In this case, the UK lags behind the US wage gap, which is 3%. The study also reports that men are offered higher salaries than women for the same role at the same company, 61% of the time.
3 in 5 women suffers discrimination
Furthermore, 67% of women ask for lower salaries than male peers, suggesting the “expectation gap” between men and women in tech. Also, 3 in 5 women have suffered discrimination in the workplace due to their gender. It’s worth mentioning that 74% feel they aren’t taken seriously at work, and 29% have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace.
Black people are under-represented!
As per the study, the UK tech scenes are dominated by white people (66%), followed by Asians (17%), mixed-race (6%), and black (3%). Moreover, 65% of non-white people in the UK believe there is an ethnicity pay gap, and 38% have experienced discrimination in the workplace because of their ethnicity. Also, 29% feel they aren’t taken seriously at work.
LGBTQIA+ women suffer more than LGBTQIA+ men
In the UK, 8% of tech workers are LGBTQIA+ out of which 68% are female, and 22% are male. One-third of the LGBTQIA+ people believe there is a wage gap between the LGBTQIA+ community and heterosexual people in tech. It’s worth mentioning here that a significant amount of LGBTQIA+ people haven’t experienced discrimination in the workplace, although 46% of neurodiverse LGTQIA+ people have.
71% of neurodiverse people aren’t taken seriously in the workplace!
As per the findings, 1 in 10 people in the tech workforce considers themselves to be neurodiverse, where people are more likely (57%) to have “imposter syndrome” in the tech workplace compared to non-neurodiverse people. On the other hand, older people (38+) are most likely to experience age-related bias in the interview process as well. “Imposter syndrome” is more of an issue for younger people, with 41% suffering from it frequently.
Gordon Smith, GM, Europe at Hired, said:
As a company that works closely with UK tech businesses, we know how hard many of these companies are working to tackle inequity and discrimination in the workplace. Our study sheds light on the issue by showcasing that the overall landscape is in need of progress as the gender pay gap and discrimination against all minorities remains an issue that urgently needs to be solved. Our hope is that the UK tech industry is able to use our data to spark positive change and that companies continue to stay committed to creating impactful change.
Real salary data!
The real salary data in this report comes from more than 30,000 interview requests, and job offers to over 5,100 candidates in the UK facilitated through Hired’s global marketplace of 10,000 participating companies and more than 98,000 job seekers. The rest of the data comes from a survey of more than 1,329 UK tech candidates on Hired’s marketplace.
Main image picture credits: Prazis Images/Shutterstock
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