BBC’s gender pay gap dispute shows the power of transparency

Two-thirds of announcers at U.K. broadcaster earning more than £150,000 are men

Those who admire the brilliant British sketch comedian Tracey Ullman will appreciate her spot-on caricature of BBC sports broadcaster and author Clare Balding.

A top performer in the sportscasting world, Balding is captured by Ullman as a striding, hyper-attentive multitasker who will purringly groom a horse or serve as helpful garbage-spearing groundskeeper when not on camera. Which is rarely. “I’m covering Crufts, skiing, wheelchair diving, tennis,” Ullman/Balding tells her producer. “And then tomorrow afternoon I’m doing religion, rugby, golf and then I’m interviewing Princess Anne about hats.”

The inexhaustible Balding has emerged as a central figure in the fuss over the gender-pay imbalance at the BBC, a state of affairs that has angered the masses and surprised few. (Excluded here is actor Tom Chambers, the new-ish star of the BBC medical drama Casualty, who has defended the disparity. “Many men’s salaries aren’t just for them, it’s for the wife and children too,” offered the deeply thinking Chambers.)

At the BBC, male “star” announcers earning in excess of £150,000 — see ex-footballer Gary Lineker’s annual draw of approximately £1.8 million, or about $3 million Canadian — outpace their female counterparts in sheer numbers. Two-thirds of the list is composed of men. The women who do make the list, as you would also expect, largely aggregate on the lower end of the salary scale. Balding’s own salary is reported between £150,000 and £200,000, or about $245,000 to $327,000. Balding is one of 44 BBC broadcasters who signed a letter sent Sunday to director general Tony Hall urging the Beeb to move with speed, advancing its prior commitment to close the gender pay gap by 2020.