Introduction
As a university guided by our ‘People First’ principles, DCU remains deeply committed to promoting Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). We continue to foster a cohesive culture across our diverse staff community, one that is inclusive, transparent, and reflective of the rich perspectives and experiences of all colleagues. We value this diversity as a cornerstone of our success and are proud to champion inclusivity across every level of the organisation.
We are pleased to present our third Gender Pay Gap (GPG) report, published in line with the Gender Pay Gap Information Act 2021. The Gender Pay Gap, defined as the difference between the average hourly wage of men and women across the workforce, does not indicate unequal pay for equal work. Instead, it provides important insight into representation patterns across earnings levels and helps identify opportunities for further structural and systemic improvement.
Based on snapshot data as of 30 June 2025, covering a total of 2,038 employees, DCU’s Gender Pay Gap for this year shows a mean gap of 7.64% and a median gap of 12.03%. Women continue to make up a significant proportion of the overall workforce, and the distribution of women and men across earnings levels remains broadly balanced in the upper two quartiles. At the same time, women continue to be more highly represented in the lower earning quartiles, a factor that influences the overall gap. The full inclusion this year of all part-time casual staff data enhances the completeness of our dataset, ensuring a more accurate and transparent reflection of the University’s workforce.
As a public-sector employer, DCU continues to operate structured, gender-neutral salary scales. Employees are paid based on grade, qualifications, and experience, irrespective of gender. Our pay determination processes remain transparent and robust, ensuring fairness and parity across comparable roles.
DCU remains committed to supporting gender balance and progression across all staff groups. Initiatives such as the Women in Leadership programmes and our ongoing Athena Swan work continue to support development, strengthen career pathways, and address structural barriers to advancement. This report outlines DCU’s Gender Pay Gap outcomes for 2025 and provides a detailed analysis of the factors contributing to this year’s results.
Our Results
GPG Metrics for all Staff, including part-time casual employees on 30th June 2025 (total of 2,038 employees)
| Mean Hourly Pay Gap | Median Hourly Pay Gap | Mean Hourly Pay Gap - Part-time Employees | Median Hourly Pay Gap - Part-time Employees | Mean Hourly Pay Gap – Temporary Employees | Median Hourly Pay Gap – Temporary Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.64% | 12.03% | 3.41% | 21.63% | 0.26% | 8.46% |
Quartile Analysis
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | 40.78% | 37.50% | 49.33% | 50.61% |
| Female | 59.22% | 62.50% | 50.67% | 49.39% |
The quartile distribution continues to show strong gender balance in the upper-middle and upper quartiles, while women remain more highly represented in the lower-earning quartiles. These results form the basis for the analysis outlined in the next section.
Mean Gender Pay Gap
Our mean hourly gender pay gap is 7.64%. The mean represents the average hourly earnings of all male employees compared with the average hourly earnings of all female employees. This figure reflects the overall distribution of men and women across different pay points and roles within the University.
Median Gender Pay Gap
Our median hourly gender pay gap is 12.03%. The median compares the hourly earnings of the woman in the middle and the man in the middle when all employees are lined up from highest to lowest paid. The median is less affected by very high or very low earnings and therefore provides a useful indication of the typical difference in hourly pay between men and women.
Gender Pay Gap Data Analysis
Our overall gender pay gap for 2025 is 7.64%. Women make up a significant proportion of DCU’s workforce, and the distribution of women and men across earnings levels remains broadly balanced in the upper-middle and upper quartiles. This reflects DCU’s continued commitment to the development and progression of female talent across the organisation, including representation in senior roles. The gender pay gap this year is influenced primarily by the higher proportion of women in the lower-earning quartiles when looking at the total staff population. The full inclusion of all part-time casual staff in this year’s dataset has also contributed to changes in the overall results, providing a more complete picture of the University’s workforce.
What is the Gender Pay Gap?
The Gender Pay Gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of women and men across an organisation. It does not identify discrimination, bias, or the absence of equal pay for equal value work. Instead, it measures how evenly women and men are represented across all roles and pay levels. The GPG is expressed as a percentage of men’s pay. A positive gender pay gap indicates that, on average, female employees have lower hourly pay than male employees.
Representation Across Earnings Levels
Women remain more highly represented in the lower-earning quartiles (Q1 and Q2), which directly influences both the mean and median Gender Pay Gaps. In contrast, the upper- middle and upper quartiles (Q3 and Q4) maintain a near gender-balanced distribution, reflecting ongoing progress in the representation of women in more senior and higher-paid roles across the University.
Full Workforce Coverage for 2025
For the first time, DCU has been able to fully incorporate all part-time casual (PTC) employee records into the GPG calculation. This is an important development in the evolution of our reporting and results in a comprehensive and transparent dataset. Part-time casual roles involve diverse working arrangements and a variety of claim-based payment structures, which can naturally create year-on-year variability. Women make up a substantial proportion of this cohort, and the full inclusion of their data contributes to movements seen in the 2025 results. This development should be viewed positively, as it strengthens the accuracy and completeness of the dataset and ensures the GPG reflects the full DCU workforce.
Context and Interpretation
DCU’s GPG continues to be driven by representation dynamics rather than pay inequality. The University applies transparent, structured, and gender-neutral salary scales that ensure equal pay for equal work. The strong female representation across the workforce and the balanced gender distribution in senior and higher-earning roles demonstrate continued progress toward long-term gender equity.
Fair and Transparent Pay Structures
All DCU staff are paid based on clearly defined salary scales according to grade, qualifications, and experience. This ensures gender-neutral and consistent pay determination across comparable roles. The 2025 results continue to reflect workforce patterns rather than differences in pay for similar work.
Long-Term Progress and Ongoing Commitment
The ongoing gender balance in DCU’s upper earnings quartiles reflects meaningful progress in leadership representation, academic progression, and senior professional roles. DCU remains committed to sustaining this progress through targeted development initiatives, mentorship programmes, leadership pathways, and ongoing work under the Athena Swan Charter. Improving data completeness in 2025 further strengthens DCU’s capacity to understand trends and plan future actions.
What causes a Gender Pay Gap if there is equal Pay?
As different jobs pay differently and the number of men and women performing these jobs varies, a gender pay gap emerges if, for example, more men are in higher paid roles or more women are in lower paid roles.
What is the difference between Unequal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap?
The gender pay gap is different from ‘equal pay’. Equal pay requires that men and women who carry out the same or similar jobs; or work of equal value, are paid the same. Paying women less than men for the same job, purely on account of their gender, is illegal and is outlawed by equality legislation.
The gender pay gap explores pay regardless of what the pay rate is for a particular job/grade/role. It is about what is earned on average by women and men based on average gross hourly earnings of all paid employees.
How are pay quartiles calculated?
The quartiles analysis ranks men and women from the lowest to highest earners. This is then divided into four even groups to show the proportions of men and women in each of these four earnings groups.
What’s included in our calculations?
The pay gap data includes ordinary pay paid to employees in the 12 months up to June 2025 i.e. basic pay, allowances, overtime, pay for leave, shift premium pay.
Activities and Actions
Gender Equality Governance
As part of the University’s EDI governance and operational structure, a Gender Equality Working Group was set up in 2025. This Working Group has been established to advance gender equality across the institution, with a primary focus on achieving and maintaining Athena Swan Charter recognition. Reporting to the EDI Steering Committee, the Working Group will drive forward the development and improvement of practical steps towards the advancement of gender equality and equity. They will be responsible for substantial self-
analysis and strive to ensure that the principles of Athena Swan are embedded throughout the University.
Athena Swan
DCU has been engaging with the Athena Swan charter since its establishment in Ireland in 2015. In 2024, DCU attained an institutional Athena Swan Silver Award; this achievement showcasing our progress with gender equality in the past ten years. As part of this Silver accreditation, the University has a five-year gender action plan (2024 – 2029). A key priority in this action plan is to continue to achieve appropriate gender representation across all staff categories and grades, including increasing female representation at the higher academic grades where underrepresentation currently exists, while also increasing male representation at the lower professional grades where underrepresentation exists. These efforts will contribute to a lower gender pay gap.
Eleven departmental Athena Swan Bronze Awards have also been attained to date, with each resulting action plan seeking to address gender imbalances identified at local level.
Women in Leadership
The DCU Women in Leadership (WiL) initiative was launched in 2015 against the backdrop of notable gender imbalance across the Higher Education sector. The vision for the Women in Leadership Initiative at DCU has always been for our university to explicitly value women as leaders and ensure that women at DCU are supported and encouraged to achieve their full potential.
The WiL initiative has contributed to more women at senior and leadership level in the University and supports the career development of women at different career stages. Since 2015, 128 female staff within DCU have participated in Aurora, with 46% of those moving into more senior positions within the University in the aftermath.
In 2021 DCU was successful in our joint application for funding to run the PAA (Preparing for Academic Advancement) with the University of Limerick. The programme is specifically for academics at Associate Professor level who are ready and credible challengers for promotion to Professor. The programme ran from 2021 to 2024, with 14 women from DCU participating. To date, 38% of these were successful in being promoted to Professor level post-programme.
Training and Development
A dedicated EDI programme of training has been in place since 2021 covering a range of topics including unconscious bias, anti-racism and cultural awareness, gender identity, among others. This programme is revisited and revised regularly based on emerging areas of focus.
The University’s Learning and Organisational Development team hosts university-wide leadership programmes open to employees of any gender. A new ‘Leadership Academy’ was developed in 2025, with a pilot programme commencing in Q4 2025. This programme offers a series of programmes designed to support and develop leadership at all levels across the University. EDI is embedded into the programme content, and areas such as unconscious bias are incorporated into learning. Gender is taken into consideration when selecting candidates for this programme, ensuring appropriate gender balance is represented.
Upcoming Actions 2026:
Our dedication to gender equality is evident in our Athena Swan Gender Equality Action Plan 2024 - 2029, which sets out clear strategies and objectives to further enhance gender equality within DCU. Our action plan includes a comprehensive approach to closing the gender gap, including specific measures to address pay disparities and achieve greater gender balance at senior levels.
Below are some key actions aimed at reducing the gender pay gap at DCU in 2026 and beyond:
- Develop of a new university-wide EDI Strategy, aligned to the DCU Strategic Plan, which focuses on embedding EDI, including gender equality, into the fabric of the University.
- Implement the new L&D Leadership Academy in Winter 2025 and launch the new Emerging Leaders Programme in Spring 2026; both to support the career advancement of all our employees in DCU.
- Conduct a comprehensive review of our Women in Leadership (WiL) initiative to ensure that our offerings to support female progression and career development are up-to-date and relevant, and take intersectionality into consideration.
- Implement the national ‘Engaging Men in Gender Equality’ project in DCU, to support the engagement of all genders with our gender equality objectives.
- Designate EDI Leads in each of our five Faculty and EDI Champions in our core professional units, with the aim to embed our EDI Strategy and gender equality objectives locally.
- Implement the flexible cascade model into our recruitment practices to ensure equal opportunity for men and women to be shortlisted for positions, particularly where a significant gender imbalance is evident in that discipline/area.
- Utilise the new Learning Management System (LMS) to host e-modules on Unconscious Bias and other related training that are self-directed in nature, and in which specific cohorts (senior leaders, line managers, etc) can be targeted.
- Develop a new Gender Equality dashboard/analytics tool which gives easier access to real-time gender data such as headcount, recruitment and promotion, and gender pay gap statistics; providing us the opportunity to be fully informed on progress at regular intervals.
- Redesign and launch a new university-wide mentoring and coaching programme to support staff of all genders to receive one-to-one career development support.