I find it very hard to get exercised about the revelation of salaries at the BBC. To be perfectly honest, I am not that bothered that the Beeb pays their ‘talent’ large amounts of money to front their TV shows. To think that they shouldn’t, or couldn’t, is to ignore the reality of television and the wider media landscape.
It is a fact, perhaps an uneasy one, that TV stars and celebrities get paid a shed load of money. The stars of Game of Thrones reportedly get £2 million per single episode (lord only knows why). Susanna Reid, poached from the BBC, is apparently in receipt of £1 million for her deal to front ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Even Des O’Connor, several years ago at the peak of his popularity, was being paid almost £4 million by ITV for his TV work. It’s ridiculous, but it’s real.
But there is one part of this whole business that sits uneasy with me, and it’s not how much we pay Gary Lineker to front MOTD. Rather its’ the fact that Lineker, and so many of his male colleagues across the network are paid far more than their female co-workers.
I know that the BBC data is not the most accurate source of information. It doesn’t take into account money paid from indirect sources; it compares someone’s pay for one job with another person’s for two or three. But there is undoubtedly a worrying trend across the BBC that sees it pay its men far more than its women. (I recognise that it also pays them more than any other group, but I want specifically to talk about the gender pay gap here).
This disparity has mobilised some of the BBC’s most high profile female stars to co-sign a letter to BBC Director General Tony Hall demanding that he act on equal pay now. These women; Sue Barker, Emily Maitlis, Gabby Logan & co do get paid a lot of money for the work that they do (a fact they recognise themselves), but this is about principle and as they say: “this is an age of equality and the BBC is an organisation that prides itself on its values.” Those values demand equality, and if the very women who do so much to showcase the BBC at a national level aren’t worthy of it, then what about everyone else? The letter points out that the work of the BBC extends beyond the screen to production, engineering and support services, and I think we can probably all have a guess at what the pay structure is like in those areas too.
See, the gender pay gap isn’t something particular to the BBC. It is existent in every single company, board room, and staff room across our land. The gender pay gap for full time employees last year was 9.4%, meaning that average pay for female full time workers is 9.4% lower than for full-time male employees.
And it’s not just pay. Women are also suffering when it comes to support, opportunity and recognition. According to the Fawcett Society “54,000 women are forced to leave their job early every year as a result of poor treatment after they have a baby” and that’s just the people we know about. Being a woman in the workplace is not about getting your arse slapped at the end of meetings (although it likely is for some women), it’s about that slight fear you feel when you find out you’re pregnant and you don’t want to tell your boss because you’ll miss out on your well deserved promotion. It’s about saying something in a meeting and then two weeks later your male colleague gets the credit for your idea. It’s about being looked over for that career move because you’re recently married and everyone’s pretty sure you’ll have kids in the next few years and they just can’t afford to have someone go off for a while. It is a creeping, subtle, silent epidemic that chokes us all.
So best of luck to Fiona Bruce and her gang. If she gets an extra million quid out of this, great. But if she can finally get some of the most powerful people in this country to see that we are worth exactly the same as our male counterparts, and that we won’t tolerate this shit any more, then I’ll watch Antiques Roadshow every week until I drop.
Politics on the side 