It’s not about negotiating. Women do ask for more pay — we just don’t get it

As Trump’s mouthpiece, Kellyanne is no expert on feminism

WE now know the BBC presenter exchange rate. You can get 11 Mishal Husains for a Chris Evans. Nine Clare Baldings buy you a Gary Lineker. And the going price of a Jeremy Vine is a good four Mel-sans-Sues.

Yesterday, the BBC published the salaries of on-air and on-screen staff earning over £150,000. It revealed such a chasm between the best-paid men and the IN The Handmaid’s Tale, Serena Joy — Offred’s tormentor and the commander’s wife — had a past life as a televangelist. She would pop up on TV, opposing feminism and telling women to be home-makers. She wasn’t following her own advice, of course, but that was for the greater good. Or for the good of her own pocket. Whatever. Conveniently those causes overlapped.

There’s something of this spirit in Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Donald Trump. She labelled feminism “antimen”. She is the mouthpiece for the most misogynistic President in decades, a spot for which there is considerable competition. Yet she deploys women’s lib to rebut criticisms that come her way.

This week she claimed that the best-rewarded women that the Mirror rechristened it the “Bloated Blokes Club”. No woman earns over £500k, but seven men do. This isn’t just about gender, though: the top 24 highest earners are all white. Additionally, it hinted at a stark income inequality at the Beeb; according to the union Bectu, 2,500 staff earn less than £20,000.

Among the women, there were notable absences. Where were Woman’s Hours diarchic queens Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey (now plotting mutiny)? Their noshows hint at a more masked sexism: the undervaluing of female stories. Neither Emily Maitlis nor champion interviewer Sarah Montague made the cut either.

Scrutinise the list, and the whiff of sex- backlash she receives is rooted in sexism. When it’s about her looks or clothes, she’s right — there’s a disproportionate focus on what women in public life wear. But she’s intentionally conflating cheap swipes with legitimate critique in a bid to silence opposition.

A certain kind of Twitter idiot now uses feminism as a way to say “no one can criticise any woman ever”. Have some harsh words for Conway or Ivanka? You failed feminism 101, ladies!

This makes no sense, because these “feminists” are invariably criticising a woman for criticising another woman. Still, the deeper problem with Conway’s comments is that by defending Trump and his “locker-room talk”, she helps perpetuate a world in which women are ism becomes a stench. The best-paid women — brilliant broadcasters though they are — are mostly beautiful. The men? No lookers in the top seven. The only justification I can find for Evans — a man whose heyday was that Nineties civilisational nadir of lad culture — earning five times what any woman makes is that he almost killed Top Gear, a distillation of everything wrong with the world. Further salt in women’s wounds is that John Inverdale, a man who collects sexism rows like squirrels do nuts, makes more than Balding. We’ll know we have gender equality when inept, ugly women are also gasp-inducingly over-paid.

These figures provoked all the predictable responses. Women should nego- spoken about in the exact way that now makes her rage.

In Margaret Atwood’s novel, Serena Joy seems to realise that she has shrunk her own sphere as well as other women’s, shackled herself to the sitting room. Perhaps Conway will have a similar epiphany — that she has sacrificed all women for the sake of a pay cheque. Who are the true “gender traitors”? tiate better! On Newsnight, Liz Forgan, a former BBC boss, said: “Women have some responsibility — we have been less assertive in the past.” Except that a study last year by Cass Business School and the Universities of Wisconsin and Warwick found that we do ask — we just don’t get. There’s a systematic undervaluing of female labour that partly occurs because most of those determining salaries are men with an unconscious bias that see their sex as providers.

Women are often advised to ask male colleagues what they earn. I’ve tried that. Those on low salaries told me, but as soon as it was obvious the bloke was the bigger earner, even the Women’s March attendee who prides himself on being progressive became tightlipped. He eventually fobbed me off with: “I’m too embarrassed to talk about money.”

That embarrassment becomes a cloak to conceal privilege. But it illustrates what we need to destroy the ubiquitous and iniquitous pay gap (still 9.4 per cent): forced transparency, a universal office glasnost where we all open up our P60s and share them with colleagues. In Norway, anyone can see your tax return.

Painful though yesterday was for the BBC, it was just a forerunner. All organisations with more than 250 staff now have to publish their gender pay gap. “Women: like men but cheaper!” goes the old joke. That will be nakedly clear.