Oxford study shows large gender gap
A study undertaken by the University of Oxford's Careers Service has found a growing gender gap between graduates from seven leading universities.
A study undertaken by the University of Oxford's Careers Service has found a large gender gap in employment six months after they have finished studying. The Careers Service at the world leading university discovered that, from the 7 universities they looked at, that female graduates were 9% less likely to be employed in a graduate-level role than their male counterparts.
The University of Oxford's Career Service examined the levels of graduate level employment for graduates 6 months after they left university and found that 90% of males were in graduate level employment. This was compared to just 81% of female graduates being in similar levels of employment.
Director of the University of Oxford's Careers Service and the person who commissioned the report, Jonathan Black, said alongside the findings 'We set out to explore the possible drivers of securing a graduate level job, and considered gender, ethnicity, social background, degree class, subject, and disability.'
'We were pleased to find that social background appears to have no significant effect on securing a graduate level job: a finding that we should celebrate. Indeed, of all the factors we explored, gender has the biggest effect, with a statistically significant lower proportion of women than men achieving a graduate level job within six months.'
Black continued and said 'Recruiters tell us that they are keen to recruit and retain women, which made us focus our research on students' attitudes and behaviours to see if we could learn what is causing this gap, and what programmes we might create to address the situation.'
The Director of the Careers Service highlighted an initiative that they had been trying. 'For example, we developed (with sponsorship from RBS) and run a holistic development programme for 150 women each year, based on the award-winning Springboard programme for mid-career women - and are delighted that this programme is now running in several other universities.'
By James Howell
Read about graduate-jobs.com's own research into the gender pay gap here
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