Duking it out in a right royal dispute
WELL, isn’t this just the pay disparity to end all pay disparities?
Claire Foy, award-winning lead (yes, LEAD), actor in the much-admired Netflix series The Crown, was paid less than the Duke of Edinburgh. No, not the real Duke of Edinburgh – the screen version played by Matt Smith.
Despite always remaining one step behind The Queen, it seems he was well ahead of her once the fruits of the actors’ labours were deposited in their respective bank accounts.
Not at all surprising really, considering that when it comes to rewarding women for doing the same job as their male counterparts, discrimination has been institutional in the UK for decades.
Talking of queens BTW, in my GMTV days I was often called the Queen of Breakfast Telly in magazines and newspapers, despite being a relative pauper in relation to my on-screen King, Eamonn Holmes. I won’t go into detail here because clearly we’re talking confidential contracts, but monetarily I was well adrift of my on-screen partner who also had “perks” that I clearly wasn’t deemed worthy of.
I even had to fight for maternity pay after being told by bosses when I broke it to them that I was pregnant that “viewers don’t like seeing pregnant women on TV, especially early in the morning”. Yes, I know. Unbelieeeeeeevable! And followed up by “you’ll have to go once it shows too much”.
In the end I stayed until I was eight months pregnant, enabled by my handy trick of always wearing slimming black tops and trousers/skirts under whichever jacket I chose to cover myself up with.
Blooming, as women are often fondly described during pregnancy, I definitely wasn’t. That was never allowed. Shamed, more like. Or that my pregnancy was a nuisance. An inconvenience.
It’s taken a long time for long-held discrimination to turn into long-felt resentment, and then to rise up into a movement for equal pay for equal jobs.
And yet, in the end, it only happened almost by mistake, courtesy of the Government’s obsession with trying to bring down the publicly owned BBC. Presenters’ salaries were published. A shock to some, but the long-awaited confirmation of a howling, established discrimination to most of the females whose pay packets had long been much less than their male counterparts.
It’s almost as if there was a widely held view that women worked as a sort of hobby, to earn a bit of extra cash for clothes, make-up, shoes, stuff for the kids and treats. Not any more!
Late last year, for the first time in my 30-odd-year career, I agreed to sign up for a job, only after seeking assurance that I was to be paid the same as my male colleague.
I hope next time Claire Foy’s in negotiations for a new role, her agent demands the same.
Though one step behind the Queen, his pay was out in front