When it comes to diversity, the numbers don’t add up
Diversity. Gender balance. More women in key positions. A plus-sized model on this season’s Love Island. Isn’t this just what’s needed?
Zoe Ball on the Radio 2 breakfast show, and any number of female sports presenters giving roundups after news bulletins? About time.
It’s been a year since it became a legal requirement for all organisations with more than 250 employees to report their gender pay gap. But when the BBC examined 1,000 companies, it discovered that in 4 out of 10 private firms, the differential is getting worse.
Despite the compelling business case for diversity – management consultancy Mckinsey has estimated it would add £150billion a year to the country’s GDP – alarmingly, almost three quarters of companies still pay men more than women. Good work, then, by the BBC at uncovering such glaring, egregiously unfair discrepancies. I wonder if the
corporation’s Karen Martin covered the story? She was announced as one of the BBC’S two new radio newsroom deputy editors in February, in what was a significant promotion.
But this week we learnt that she turned down the job – because she would be paid £12,000 less than her male counterpart. Eventually, BBC news bosses raised the offer by £5,000, but Martin stood strong.
It was a matter of principle. Poignantly, it was her daughters, aged 13 and 7, who
helped her reach the decision.
“They said: ‘You always tell us to stand up for what is right. If it means less pocket money or not going on holiday, we don’t mind. What matters to us is that when we grow up we want to be paid the same as a man for the same job’.”
No arguing with that. Diversity is a sham if the numbers don’t add up. Gender balance is a mockery if women are valued less.
Last year, the digital, culture, media and sport select committee found the BBC had failed in its duty to give staff equal pay and opportunities, and found women at the corporation were earning “far less” for doing comparable jobs in a “culture of invidious, opaque decision-making”.
The inquiry was sparked by presenter Carrie Gracie, the BBC’S former China editor who discovered she was underpaid compared to her male peers. Her bosses apologised and gave her back pay, but Gracie left her role, accusing the BBC of operating a “secretive and illegal pay culture” and said it was facing a “crisis of trust”.
Have the BBC’S men in suits learnt nothing from that shameful episode? Equality of opportunity must be synonymous with equal pay or it’s not equality. Even a seven-year-old can see that.