‘She’s a woman, pay her less’
Qualified and capable, but overlooked? Could you, perhaps, be a woman? Or a member of a minority? The glass ceiling has been a reality for a really long time, and when the term became common usage in the latter half of the ’80s, there was a curious newness to it. The novelty was not the fact of the disparity in pay grades, but this description itself that accurately described a transparent but real barrier to growth and advancement for women in corporate life.
Since we’re all back to the ‘Show and Tell’ routine from kindergarten, where we have to make a display of what we know, the new trend is going to be the equal-to sign: ‘=’. And it goes back to BBC’s China editor Carrie Gracie, who resigned from her post to protest “an indefensible pay gap between men and women doing equal work”. She had discovered that the two male international editors with the BBC earned “at least 50 per cent more” than the two women in the same grade. Gracie has worked at the publicly funded news channel for over 30 years, is a fluent Mandarin speaker, and was invited to this post four years ago by the BBC. Says she in an open letter addressing BBC viewers, “I am not asking for more money. I believe I am very well paid already – especially as someone working for a publicly funded organisation. I simply want the BBC to abide by the law and value men and women equally.” The trending hashtag today is #IStandWithCarrie.
Many actresses in Hollywood have spoken up on this issue over the last few years. Jennifer Lawrence was outspoken in an essay in Lena Dunham’s newsletter Lenny Letter in 2015, the year she was supposedly the highest earning female actress in Hollywood. In 2017, Emma Stone, the highest earning actress in Hollywood according to the Forbes annual list, is at least 14 places behind her male counterparts. Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rooney Mara and others have raised their voices as have a cross-section of actresses from Bollywood. They have all had to bite the bullet of being labelled as difficult divas, and much worse.
At the Golden Globes last week, Debra Messing slyly ideabombed, so to speak, her own live interview with E! on the red carpet, saying, “I was so shocked to hear that E! doesn’t believe in paying their female cohosts the same as their male co-hosts.” She was referring to the channel’s female cohost Catt Sadler, who resigned in December after finding out that co-host Jason Kennedy earned twice what she did. The issue, clearly, is live. The celebrity platform finds it easier to find an audience. However, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has shared figures that indicate that the income gender gap across industries has widened over the last 10 years. Iceland leads in closing the gap this year (for the ninth year in a row), followed by Norway, Finland, Rwanda (the highest share of female parliamentarians in the world — 61 per cent), Sweden, Nicaragua (best performer in the Latin America and Caribbean region for the sixth year), Slovenia, Ireland, New Zealand (maintains its position from last year), and with the Philippines rounding off the tenth position. The WEF report indicates, “On current trends, the overall global gender gap can be closed in exactly 100 years [across the 106 countries covered]. The most challenging gender gaps remain in the economic and health spheres. Given the continued widening of the economic gender gap, it will now not be closed for another 217 years.”
Many of the women who have spoken up on the issue have mentioned meritocracy — the demand is equal pay for equal work. Iceland is the first country that has in this week announced that it has passed a law based on the Equal Pay Standard. It must be noted that the country already had laws to ensure equal pay since 1961, but the new law mandates that companies maintain records proving pay parity across genders, and submit these to the government.
Billie Jean King chose to express equality in her public tennis challenge dubbed the Battle of the Sexes, where she played against, and defeated Bobby Riggs in 1973. But it’s not a question of who ‘has the bigger button’ — it simply is about an organisation valuing each of its employees equally and stepping out of a retrograde patriarchy.
As Carrie Gracie reminds viewers at the close of her letter, “It is a century since women first won the right to vote in Britain.” How far the needle moves on the equation of equal pay remains to be seen.
On pay, the BBC is not living up to its stated values of trust, honesty and accountability. Salary disclosures the BBC was forced to make six months ago revealed not only unacceptably high pay for top presenters and managers but also an indefensible pay gap between men and women doing equal work. Carrie Gracie Former China editor, BBC
On current trends, the overall global gender gap can be closed in exactly 100 years. The most challenging gender gaps remain in the economic and health spheres. Given the continued widening of the economic gender gap, it will now not be closed for another 217 years. The Global Gender Gap Report World Economic Forum