Plaudits for Jon Snow for taking a gender pay cut but brickbats for Ben describing economy as menopausal
Well
done to news presenter Jon Snow for showing solidarity with women by taking a 25% gender pay cut.
I think some will appreciate the gesture, although many will question why the female salaries weren’t increased instead.
If more men stood alongside women in this way, change might come more quickly and easily. Yet every week there are still examples of men going against the grain.
What was Ben Broadbent, the Bank of England’s deputy governor, thinking this week when he described Britain’s economy as “menopausal”? He was trying to explain financial jargon in layman’s terms and picked unfortunate terminology, to say the least.
He went on to say it meant economies that are “past their peak and no longer so potent”.
It was wrong and so offensive to women, but I have a little sympathy for him. As someone in the public eye who has to make speeches and occasionally give live interviews, I think this shows how picking one wrong word or phrase can backfire.
If he’d said it a year ago, there probably wouldn’t have been the same outrage. But because of the current climate, it made the news, leading to thousands of comments on social media, and he had to apologise.
There’s much more openness around the menopause and what women go through these days, but there’s still a belief among some people that once women hit a certain age, they’re just a bit “past it”. Is it the same for men? I don’t think so.
I have a friend in her 50s who is a sports TV presenter. She said to me recently that she couldn’t help feeling threatened because younger, more glamorous women were being brought in to basically read an autocue. Yet my friend is an expert in her field, a trained journalist, a former international athlete and has years of experience.
She’s still in the job, so hopefully her fears are unfounded. But she’s not alone. The very fact women are feeling that way shows there’s a long way to go.
We don’t need model types reading the news or on our sports programmes. We want people who can speak with authority and know their subject.
We have lots of campaigning around the gender pay gap. But sometimes it feels like we are still so behind the times.
I see signs of hope, though. I’m heartened that big brands are starting to use more diverse models in their advertising campaigns – curvier, taller, different ethnicities and a broader age range.
Bigger models like Ashley Graham are winning prestigious modelling contracts and ad campaigns.
It’s about time companies realised that not many of us are size six – and, actually, not many of us aspire to be, either.
The irony over Ben Broadbent’s comment is that if the economy was menopausal, it would be kicking all the other economies where it hurts and showing the world it wasn’t finished yet.