Women academics are falling even further behind men in salaries, says a university union.

According to the Association of University Teachers, male academic staff earned 18% more than their female counterparts in the year 1998 to 1999.

This is worse than the 17% pay gap identified in the previous year - and the union says the figures should "shock every university into action".

"Gender discrimination simply gets worse. New agreements to deal with this scandal have arrived not a moment too soon," said the union's general secretary, David Triesman.

Temporary contracts

The union last week agreed with university employers to work together on developing an equal opportunities policy - which would provide national and local targets for sexual equality within higher education.

The pay gap has been calculated as an average of permanent and fixed contract staff - with the average for female lecturers standing at £26,164 compared to £30,924 for male lecturers.

The figures suggest that the greatest imbalance in pay is among staff on temporary contracts.

The pay gap is much smaller among permanent and senior staff - with the difference between male and female permanent lecturers recorded as 4.1% and 4.8% for senior lecturers.

The survey also records individual institutions with large gender salary gaps - with Wye College, Derby University and Robert Gordon University identified as having above-average pay gaps.

There were only two colleges in which women were found to be earning 10% more than men - Teesside University and Luton University.