Women 'ask for nearly £4,000 less than men'

Published on Tuesday 25 March 2008 21:48

WOMEN are asking for nearly £4,000 a year less in pay than men on average when registering with a leading online recruitment service, it was disclosed yesterday.

A survey of 850,000 people who registered in the past year with www.reed.co.uk showed the average UK man expected to earn 3,600 more than the average woman.

Jobseekers born between 23 December and 19 January, aged between 40 and 50, and called Steve, who also live in the south-east of England, were the most ambitious.

Expecting a salary of 26,482, Steve was more ambitious than Graham, at 24,324, and Ian, at 24,168.

The most ambitious woman was Jane, but she asked for a much lower salary than Steve, expecting just 20,346 a year.

The least ambitious male and female names in the top 50 were Adam, who expected 17,411 per year and Danielle, who expected 15,071.

Jobseekers in the south-east of England demanded the highest salary levels, at an average of 21,165. Expectation in Scotland was 18,678.

The three most popular sectors for jobseekers over the past year were administration and secretarial positions, followed by IT and telecoms and accountancy.

Martin Warnes, the operations director at reed.co.uk, said: "Our analysis revealed some interesting trends – the most worrying being that women across the UK have far lower salary expectations than men – something which needs to be addressed, as there is no reason why in 2008 this should be the case."