Female junior execs break gender pay barrier

New figures released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) show that female executives are earning as much as their male counterparts for the first time since its records began, albeit only at junior executive level.

Earning an average salary of £21,969, female junior executives in the UK are currently being paid marginally more (£602) than male executives at the same level, whose average salary is £21,367.

However, the average figures across the whole sample of 34,158 UK executives surveyed by XpertHR on behalf of CMI suggest equal pay for male and female executives across all seniority levels remains a long way off. According to the 2011 National Management Salary Survey, men continue to be paid more on average than women doing the same jobs (£42,441 compared to £31,895), revealing a gender pay gap of £10,546.

This persistent gap means that, despite the fact that salaries for female executives as a whole are currently increasing faster than those of their male counterparts (female salaries increased by 2.4% during the 12 months between February 2010 to February 2011, a 0.3% higher rate of increase than for male salaries), if male and female salaries continued to increase at current rates, it would be 2109 – 98 years – before the average salary for female executives catches up with that of their male peers.