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Female executives are currently being paid more at junior executive level than their male counterparts but achieving equal pay across all seniority levels will take another 98 years, research reveals.

UK female junior executives are earning an average salary of £21,969, some £602 more than male executives at the junior level, whose average salary is £21,367.

However, men continue to be paid more on average than women doing the same jobs, earning £42,441 compared with £31,895, and revealing a gender pay gap of £10,546, according to figures released by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

The 2011 National Management Salary Survey, which sampled 34,158 UK executives, shows that salaries for female executives increased 2.4 per cent in the 12 months from February 2010 to February 2011, a 0.3 per cent higher rate of increase than for male salaries.

The CMI warns that if male and female wages continue to rise at current rates, it will be 2109, or another 98 years, before the average salary for female executives catches up with that of their male peers.

The survey also reveals that this year’s pay gap is slightly bigger than the £10,031 gap in the 2010 Salary Survey.

Salary increases have also fallen since last year’s survey, when male salaries were rising at a rate of 2.3 per cent and women’s by 2.8 per cent.

Petra Wilton, CMI’s director of policy and research says that businesses are contributing to the ‘persistent’ gender pay gap and ‘alienating’ female employees.

‘Imposing mandatory quotas and forcing organisations to reveal salaries is not the solution. We need the government to scrutinise organisational pay, demand more transparency from companies on pay bandings and publicly expose organisations found guilty of fuelling the gender pay gap,’ Wilton suggests.

The survey was conducted by employment intelligence service XpertHR on behalf of CMI.

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