It's low-paid because it's an English-degree-y sort of job, and humanities-degree-y jobs are undervalued across most sectors, at least in part because women make up a larger proportion of humanities graduates than of graduates in other fields. (See also: nursing and teaching, still undervalued because historically they were done mainly by women.) Also, I suspect we might have had a better showing in the review if more of our department were men; the techies (mostly men) did.