From research undertaken in 2012 on where public bodies were at on Equal Pay and closing the gender pay gap, it was concluded :
government can finally, after more than 40 years, ensure that the missing piece of the jigsaw which has left equal pay for women as a job too long incomplete, is finally retrieved from behind the sofa cushions of public sector apathy. By commissioning a consortium of the major equality groups to construct and manage a centralised equal pay gap database accessible to all – ministers and members of the public - and designed to hold equal pay gap data submitted directly and annually by all public sector bodies, real mainstreaming, accountability, transparency and powerful drivers for effective performance management on delivering equal pay for all the protected characteristics would ensure equal pay across the equality spectrum did not require another 40 years.
In 2015, when research returned to look specifically at Universities in Scotland, the gender pay gap was revealed to be [18.85% ]. By 2019 the gender pay gap was 17.27% and in 2021 it was 16.49%.
When revisited in 2023, the focus of the research was to examined what universities were doing on occupational segregation and linking this to the gender pay gap. For those universities which provided key data sets for their individual pay gap figures, when aggregated, revealed a sector-wide Pay Gap of 15.18%.
On occupational segregation and its link to the Pay Gaps being reported, there was no evidence of a consistent sector-wide approach, with some universities not even using the phrase in their analysis of what were the causes of the Pay Gaps. Of those universities which did mention occupational segregation in their reports, none offered any SMART goals for reducing and eliminating it in closing the Pay Gaps being reported.