UKC

So the salaries of the top earns at the BBC were revealed yesterday with the list clearly dominated by white males.
After looking through the entire published list I was left with somewhat mixed feelings.
On one hand I was thinking; well yeah, to attract the top talent you have to pay the top salaries but on the other hand, how the F*ck are we in a situation where Nick Grimshaw of BBC radio 1 earns more than the prime minister...?!

Small calculation:
The BBC pays Chris Evans a salary of £2,200,000-£2,249,999.
Lets for the purpose of the calculation take the lower amount £2,200,000.
He works 5 mornings per week on the Radio 2 breakfast show which is on air from 06.30 - 09.30 so 3 hours per day.
You can see where I'm going with this....
Lets be really generous and assume he doesn't take any annual leave and works 52 weeks per year.
So 3*5 = 15 hours per week * 52 = 780 hours worked per year
2200000 / 780 = 2820.51
So the BBC pays CE £2820 per hour.

Eye watering! No wonder he's had his ma on the blower..

I'm not sure what to make of it all but one thing for sure; the sums of money involved are astronomical for what can probably only be described as the cushiest number in town.

In reply to handofgod:


Performance-related pay?

In reply to handofgod:

Don't forget he did topgear too for that.

It is a bit weird some of these.... Nick from DIY SOS was very high up the list...I'm guessing he does something other than annoy tradesmen for a living

On the other hand, the clear and obvious "waste" of money is in sport (which by it's nature contributes to the issues around gender)

I really struggle how they can justify the salaries of the MOTD pundits just spouting crap for an hour a week (in season), no doubt hovering up perks for final tickets etc too.

In the end it all comes down to what we want the BBC to be

In reply to skog:
Actually, with TM as PM that is a poor comparison

In reply to handofgod:

Is it really a salary though? Is it not more like a payment to his production company which is meant to cover running costs as well? I agree that there are some eye wateringly high salaries out there that are hard to justify. Can we start on the footballers next.

Al

In reply to GridNorth:

The difference between say highly paid footballers and highly paid BBC staff is; footballers are paid by a private entity, the club. Where as the gross over payment of the BBC high earns comes from the public purse, average joe like you and me who pay the licence fee.

In reply to balmybaldwin:

In football, good presenters are at a premium, with several other channels prepared to offer more money. That is why second string presenters like Jason Mohamed are on big salaries.

In reply to The New NickB:
Jason Mohamed must be quota filler because his presenting is god awful.

In reply to handofgod:


Anyone with satellite tv is paying the over inflated footballers salaries.

In reply to The New NickB:

But it could easily be argued that any old bloke in a pub could do the job. Equally it could be argued that with Mens Football having such good widespread coverage that it isn't necessary for the Beeb to cover it and should look at changing the format to be MOTD for the women's game (and have less in demand talent)

This is what I was getting at around what we want the BEEB to be.

In reply to handofgod:

There is a gender pay issue, but I think the biggest error is letting the stars of the shows become "The Brand" so they then have a market value relative to the show.

Take Great British Bake Off.

Series 1 - how much did they pay Paul Hollywood?
Now - how much is he worth.

Consider if they had replaced the judges each year with a celeb chef "du jour" + an unknown industry expert. They could have kept the pay level each year.

Look at the top 10 and what is crazy is their salary more reflects the value of their show - and for many the show is theirs. But it's pure chance that they were the presenter that got it. Huw Edwards is just one of a number of good news readers, Steve Wright, Jeremy Vine and Chris Evans all present radio shows - are those shows any better for them than when they have holiday stand ins, personally I avoid all of them - Chris Evans ruined the Terry Wogan show.


If you take out the extremely overpaid roles, the gender gap becomes a lot less apparently - only 10% !! Still unacceptable in an industry where there can be no excuse for a gender bias.

In reply to GridNorth:
Production Company or BBC Worldwide payments are not included in those figures. So for instance LeBlanc (BBC worldwide paid) isn't there for TG nor Graham Norton for his chat show, D Dimbleby for QT or Lord Sugar for TA.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/19/bbc-pay-list-hidden-names-corpor...

In reply to Philip:

One day you will be able to afford a BBC man!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bbc-gender-pay-gap-...


...and on the ethnicity pay gap:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/20/highest-paid-bbc-star...

In reply to Philip:
The BBC didn't pay Paul Hollywood. They bought a complete product from a production company.

In reply to Philip:


Which is apparently the explanation of Claudia Winkleman's salary. Presenting 'Strictly'; is that really worth £450-500k?

In reply to handofgod:

I always avoid Chris Evans, on radio or telly, as I consider him to be an irritating, talentless twxt. No offence, mate. I suppose I'd have to pay him minimum wage to keep it legal. Now I hear that he earns over£2m a year. At my expense. Fxck me with a striped banana.

In reply to captain paranoia:


She also has a show on Radio 2, which presumably explained why she is paid more than Tess Daley.

In reply to Pekkie:

I used to love wogan in the morning but I find CE incredibly annoying and smarmy.

In reply to handofgod:

There was a great comment I saw saying that someone pretending to be a nurse is being paid more than a nurse.

In reply to handofgod:


Interesting how you never see anyone responding to criticism of Chris Evans by vigorously defending him and pointing out that he is actually talented and charismatic and actually not a twxt. Funny that.

In reply to Pekkie:
I think he does a really good job on radio 2 breakfast. I was very sceptical when Wogan left, but he won me over very quickly.

I think reading any conclusions in to the published figures without knowing what they are for is pointless anyway. Pay for specific roles would have been more revealing in many cases.

I confess Im surprised how much a good radio DJ seems to command (not just Evans) as I didn't think there was much money in commercial radio these days...shows how much I know.

In reply to Si dH:


OK. Anyone else think that Chris Evans is worth over £2m a year? Let's be fair about this.

In reply to Pekkie:
I didn't say that. I said I thought he was a good radio 2 breakfast presenter.

I struggle to believe that they really spend that much just for the breakfast show anyway. Surely most of that would be his top gear payments, for which it doesn't really surprise me they were willing to pay a huge amount go get their man, because they sell the show round the world and were desperate not to lose out to the grand tour etc.
Would be interesting to know whether he made more than clarkson.

In reply to handofgod:

Had to LOL sat in Soho yesterday couple of media types sat next to me talking about this "some of those East Ender's actors work five days a week and don't even earn £200,000 - that's not right!"

D

In reply to handofgod:

How much did we all think they earned? I'm not especially surprised at all, it's clearly the going rate for celebrities. When I'm presenting a breakfast show with nearly 10 million viewers then maybe I'll earn £2.2m a year. The question I'm most baffled by is why nearly 10 million people listen to one of the most irritating men on the planet every morning...

I don't think the solution to the gender pay gap is just to pay the top guys less, it's fostering female presenters for big roles and trying to make sure there are talented females joining the organisation in the first place in equal numbers to men

In reply to handofgod:
I was reading something last night which stated that the top earners at the BBC only account for less than 1% of entire the BBC workforce. Not sure if that makes it any more acceptable.
But still can't get my head round how that gob sh!te on R1 can earn more than someone like the PM who is supposed to be address real life issues and problems.

In reply to Lifeismeaningless:

But this doesn't address the lack of ethnic presenters on the list.
Also I suspect, the BBC has a very low % of ethnics working across its whole operation.
In fact, I recall watching a documentary about this very issue a few years ago.

Male, white, middle class, red brick - YOU'RE IN.

In reply to handofgod:

Good point. Like sexism I guess it depends where the problem occurs, is it at the interview process, university applications in the field, in schools? If the interview panel pick the person most qualified for the job (as they should)then there is a problem further down the ladder. Tricky problem

As an aside, it is possible that given infinite choices the general public on average might chose to listen to the white male presenter over the others, I guess this is all part of the same problem and it's much deeper than just paying the top guys less

In reply to handofgod:

Thats the real issue here... the pay of individual stars is a bit of a red herring... the real problem is a governance failure and on that subject the BBC now moving most of its internal production into 'independant' production company.

On Chris Evans part of his pay is hidden in BBC worldwide (as per the Telegraph link above).

Too much of what the taxpayer funds has terrible governance leading to huge gender and ethnicity pay gaps. Universities are a classic example.. you'd expect them to be OK... intellectual drivers that they are... but the average gender pay gap for academics was as large as £9.8k (Leicester) which even shocked my cynical viewpoint (couldn't resist the chance to link the Hinckley Times for the first time .

http://www.hinckleytimes.net/news/local-news/university-leicesters-gender-p...

In reply to captain paranoia:


Is it the salary for 2016-17? Because she also presented Sewing Bee, Film 2016 and a radio show.

In reply to Pekkie:


Its glass half full with Evans. He is undoubtedly a talented radio presenter (with probably a wider age appeal than the peerless Terry Wogan) as attested to by his listening figures BUT I suspect he is a right smarmy tw*t who I'd really not like to be with in real life.

In reply to Offwidth:

'but the average gender pay gap for academics was as large as £9.8k (Leicester) which even shocked my cynical viewpoint (couldn't resist the chance to link the Hinckley Times for the first time .'

I don't like to be controversial here, but surely a gender gap is likely to occur in any environment where basically staff get paid more for being more experienced?

If a person decides, as an entirely legitimate and valid lifestyle choice, to take a few years off to spend bringing up their young family, then they will be less experienced and therefore less valuable to their employer than someone who has been enhancing their experience, skills and knowledge in that time. Therefore they are going to earn less when they return to work. Given that the majority of people making that kind of choice are currently women, then there will inevitably be a 'gender gap.'

I hear equality campaigners banging on about his all the time, and I really don't get it. (This, I should stress, is completely different to where a man and a woman are working side by side doing exactly the same job, in which case self evidently they should be paid exactly the same.)

In reply to Alyson:

She did two radio shows.. the Friday night arts one and the Sunday show. She also did the Buble one off in 2016, I vaguely remember one of those comedy quiz things and possibly some paid prep for Makeover.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:
Really?? £9.8k less on average on an overall average pay level of just over £42k within the very strict maternity protections that exist in lecturers contracts and a very significant proportion of women these days not taking a career break to bring up kids?????

This is what Leicester HR say about it:

http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/ult/2017/03/08/international-womens-day-the-gend...

The numbers actually taking maturnity leave are surprisingly low and leave lengths are short compared to the average.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/18/academia-for-women-short-...

In reply to Offwidth:

I'd have three questions on this which I very seldom see properly addressed.

1) Is there a gender pay gap for people of different genders doing equivalent or the same jobs?

2) If the gender pay gap results largely from more men doing senior jobs than women is this the result of systemic discrimination in hiring and promotion or of the life and job choices of the people involved?

3) If it is the latter, should the choice of a long term break for maternity be offset by increasing the employees pay regardless of the gap in training and experience resulting from the career break?

PS> Written before you added the graniad article!

In reply to Postmanpat:
There are multiple problems that lead to the pay gaps. Interview panels were more likely to put white men on a higher starting grades who were then less affected by career breaks (mainly for children but also things like carer's leave ) and were more likley to get accelerated progression or promotion (despite existing average pay advantages on a comparative performance basis). This is in a system where HR has rather lost its way and become too servile in the face of bad management decisions and institutional governance has often completely failed to spot and act (until recently expressing views similar to Rob's above). Historically this has been aggravated by Universities having very low numbers of women or ethnic minority staff in senior roles (ie those most likely to care and do something about it). Things are improving fast here, despite a rather large current gap remaining, but making the system broadly fair will take decades. Universities are currently full of examples of very similar performance profiles with huge pay gaps on gender and ethnicity. It is possible to do things differently: organisations like the NHS have much better processes and much fairer gender pay levels.

In reply to Offwidth:

If I am understanding you correctly, the gender pay gap at Leicester (or higher education in general) results partly or largely from systemic discrimination in entry pay levels and promotion opportunities. This is obviously fixable.

But, given that even if it is fixed, there is likely to be a continuing pay gap based on life and career choices, what is the answer to:
3) Should the choice of a long term break for maternity be offset by increasing the employees pay regardless of the gap in training and experience resulting from the career break?

In reply to Postmanpat:
I'd add there are some distortions due to subject (STEM Profs tend to get higher pay than averege as a group with poorer than average gender balance) but I don't see this STEM effect being anything like as much as in the economy at large.

The gap for BME men and childless women is still significant (unlike in the US where structures and litigation seems to have forced better equality for equivalent qualification). Its also bigger for BME women than you would expect from the combined factors. Black staff in the BME group have the largest pay gaps and the situation is worse at the top above the checks and balances of the National Pay Framework.

https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/5559/Report-The-position-of-women-and-BME-staf...

In reply to Offwidth:

Let's leave BME out of it for now. It adds yet another layer of complexity.

What is the answer on ?

In reply to Postmanpat:
On your question I guess its a balance of extra up-front costs vs the cost of loss of effectiveness for skilled people taking career breaks if you do nothing (mainly for women in maternity but some men do take prime responsibility for childcare and there are also long term carer issues and other reasons for career breaks). Some NHS contracts do mitigate this for maturnity at a cost (part of the Junior Docs contract row). In Unis there is good protection for maternity in contracts and some protection in career defining quality processes, like REF (but the last REF data clearly shows we need to improve this)

Other things that cost have been shown to help and companies claim this is cost effective.. like more in-work creche services.

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Didn't Amazon pick up the tab for that? If not they *ucking ought to have.

In reply to Offwidth:


I don't know whether in academia one can take 5-10 years out and expect to catch that up in experience and knowledge just through extra expenditure on training etc. In many jobs I would suggest that is is almost impossible.

Would it in fact be equitable? If woman <a> has stayed at work for 5-10 years, attracted new clients, executed deals and massively enhanced her skills and employability, is it equitable that woman (b) who has taken 5-10 years out and therefore got none of those things, should be fast tracked to equal rank and pay on her return?

In reply to Alyson:

And she's f*cking funny.

The bit that really boiled my piss, notwithstanding the outrageous gender pay gap and the size of some of the very top salaries, was Charlie Fairhead from Casualty getting £350k. For staring catatonically into the corner of a room. People acting as coma victims have put more into it than he does!

In reply to handofgod:

I think you've missed a bit. I assume he puts in a bit of effort in the scheduling of his show, rehearsals and getting people to appear, so you should tweak your calcs. I preferred wogan for his subtle humour, but Chris Evans is good.

Something you shouldn't forget is that he has probably raised more money for charity than the whole of UKC combined.

In reply to Postmanpat:
Look at the data in that Guardian article again...very low numbers, on average for much shorter periods. A huge amount of investment goes into high performing professionals and we have to fill a huge proportion of current academic vacancies from overseas.

Yes, I think if a woman who returns after such a very long break (massively above the average break) is then performing at the same level as the woman who stayed they should get the same pay as a Prof and if on the standard incremental pay scales should get some accelerated progression. The person who took such a long break has lost plenty of pay that she could have had if she chose to return earlier. A further irony is that the academic day job is so busy these days that returning staff have often had more time to catch up with their subject and wider research developments in their area.

In reply to handofgod:

BBC hardly representive of the population - not matters how many well spoken inoffensive Oxbridge grad cringing Nancys (non pegeroritve, inclusive language) / sons and daughters of foreign diplomats they employ. Keep ticking those inclusive and diverse box's BBC but mind the gap?

Endless recycling of 'celebs' also grips my haemorrhoids once on tele, always on tele. CE please fook off and enjoy fast cars somewhere else you blithering vacous idiot.

( I'm sure he's a lovely fella)

TBH it's not for me, its awash with oestrogens, so I shouldn't complain, barely watch it.


D

In reply to jonnie3430:


I only skim read this predictable thread but I think that you are the only person so far to have pointed out the inanity of that assumption, that a 3 hour live radio show only needs 3 hours of work from the main presenter!

In reply to jonnie3430:

So did Jimmy Saville but look how that ended....

In reply to Offwidth:

How many are performance liabilities after returning to work >>> time off, sickness, part time, flexible (actually, flexible for them, totally inflexible for employer shift pattern?

Unfair? Want to overturn the dizzy heights of that 10% pay gap, I've got a suggestion, don't have any kids, concentrate on your career and there's far too many of us at this point in history, so do the planet a favour.

D

In reply to Offwidth:
I Just drawing in the experiences of my wife ( who was not in academia)

She would be classified as a high performing professional ( as an idea in between our 1st and 2nd child she was earning 6 figure salary plus share options etc). If she was off work for 5-10 years there is no way she would come back on the same rate etc. I doubt if men would be able do that over that time scale.

The gap is there when women are off for say 1 month before child birth and then returning a couple of months later. That is the critical area.

Long breaks are really a red herring.

Its the short breaks that are still unjustifiably the hidden killers for gender equality.

In reply to Offwidth:


Legally if somebody does the same job and performs equally they have to be paid equally regardless of gender. The question is whether people returning from long breaks should be paid equally anyway.

When you say "low numbers, for shorter periods", aren't you avoiding the point? Let us say that at the age of 30 the number and rank/pay of academics of each gender is equal. Let us suppose that over the next 10 years 75% of the women will have babies. 25% of those will take short term maternity leave and return (the low numbers to which you refer), 25% will leave never to return, and 50% will leave for 5-10 years to bring up a family and then return, possibly on a part time basis to suit their family demands.

95% of the men have remained working full time.

How do propose that at the age of 45 and beyond one maintains the equal gender rank and pay balance in such circumstances (25% of women have left the work force and many others have been out of it for many years) without discriminating against those men and women who stayed at work full time or took only short term maternity leave?

In reply to handofgod:


Aha, brilliant! So in your world raising money for charity is a sign that someone is a sexual predator. Better inform the American police about Bill Gates then, or inform crime watch about children in need...

In reply to Postmanpat:

You weigh up those factors and analyse what you have compared to what you would expect and UK Universities have been found wanting. UCEA say its real and are working with the Unions to help reduce the problem. Even just comparing childless women who never left with men for there is still too big a gap (unlike say some of the latest professional data from the US... from the economist link below: "Single, childless women earn 95 cents for every dollar a single, childless man makes"). Universities have been below expectations on gender pay gaps and at supporting women who want to return to work.

http://www.ucea.ac.uk/en/publications/index.cfm/njgender

https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21600998-after-falling-years-p...

In reply to jonnie3430:
Get a grip. Of course I'm not insinuating charity work = pedo watch list.
I was merely pointing out; all is not what it seems sometimes and when people seem to be doing good deeds, there can be ulterior motives behinds those deed i.e. career enhancement / increasing popularity.

In reply to neilh:
Of course they are a red herring: PP (the master of that tint of fish) introduced the idea of such long breaks and I pointed out the data in the Guardian link shows that maternity leave isn't so common in Universities as the average (must only be around the order of 1% annually if you look at those numbers on Universities with of the order of a thousand female staff in those grades) and averaging at about half a year (compared to an average of 2/3rds nationally)

In reply to Offwidth:

>
Yes, but given my theoretical example, how would one end the gender pay gap?

In reply to Offwidth:

Yes, but as I have tried to say, that is is only one limited aspect of the issue: a red herring ? Does the Garadain article have any numbers for the % of women leaving the workforce or leaving it for long periods? I couldn't see any.

In reply to Alyson:


I wasn't commenting on how much work she does; I was commenting on the suggestion 'I think the biggest error is letting the stars of the shows become "The Brand"'. Which I think is true; her salary reflects the popularity of the shows, not how hard she might work. Whether a presenter's contributions are responsible for making the show a success, and therefore more deserving of other shows, who can say?

There are plenty of presenters who have a lot more air time, but aren't paid as much; the newsreaders, for instance.

In reply to jonnie3430:


Personally? Or by appearing on things like Children In Need, where, essentially, people give money to the cause, not to the figurehead.

Acting as a figurehead is only giving your time. It's the people giving to charity who are doing the charitable bit. I'm sure there are plenty of people on UKC who give their time to charitable causes, and, with the 150k or so members, I suspect the sum of that time will outnumber Chris Evans' lifetime many times over...

In reply to Postmanpat:
For starters you try and measure it and reduce problems, not set rhetorical traps like 'ending it'. In practical terms there is much done through Athena Swan and in very concrete terms some Universities simply gave female Profs a differential pay rise. See the UCEA reports if you want details.

On the women leaving the workforce issue, I guess its a standard response I make to you.... if you want answers to your own side questions do your own research. I don't see its relevant to the article talking about the the problems faced by those on average who take much shorter breaks and return.

In reply to captain paranoia:

I doubt very much top newsreaders work much longer hours for the BBC than her. Some front line investigative journalists might.... who get paid much less.

In reply to Offwidth:


News 24 presenters have fairly long stints, IME. And have regular (daily) stints. And, again, they don't just 'read the news'.

In reply to captain paranoia:

I'm fully aware of that. She doesn't just present all those shows either. I get the impression she is very busy.

In reply to Offwidth:

>
It's not a "rhetorical trap". Time and again one reads articles about "ending the gender pay gap". so I assume that the writers for maybe this is considered an "end". Would you agree that the theoretical example suggests it is a logical impossibility (without draconian measures) and that in this case we should be acknowledging this not creating mathematically impossible targets.


>
It's your standard response to my questions asking you to justify your opinion, "justify my opinion for me" (in this case if it's not your opinion just say so) I am not focusing on an article about the issue of maternity pay gaps. I am interested in the broader issue of what the gender pay gap represents, whether and how it can be reduced and if so how far. If that is not your concern so be it.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Point 1. Its rhetoric. Even so, to 'end' something in practical terms you have to start somewhere and make progress.
Point 2. There is no gender pay gap if someone isn't there, so those who leave work completely are irrelevant. The article covers issues for those who return from maternity leave and gives the average times taken for that leave. I'm pretty sure its impossible to track those who go for a long time for maternity and then work in a different institution or those taking long breaks for work not on a particular policy.

In reply to Offwidth:

>
I disagree that it is rhetoric. One has to acknowledge what is impossible when lamenting that the impossible has not been achieved.

>
Of course it isn't. If you removed 25% of a cohort you remove the chance that will achieve the level of their peers so you've tipped the playing field. Women are underepresented at CEO level-well if 25% of the potential female CEOs have quit then of course they are, and that will impact relative pay. And if another portion are out of the workforce for a prolonged period, or choose to return on a part time or less "career oriented" basis they will directly impact the pay gender gap.

You keep referring to one single article about one specific issue. I am not referring to that.

In reply to jonnie3430:
>...Better inform the American police about Bill Gates then, ...

This should happen, but for very different reasons, IMHO. IIRC, moves were made to investigate him vis-a-vis the US equivalent of our "Monopolies and Mergers" commission, when that tosser George "Dubya" Bush was president. Unfortunately "Dubya" did the predictable thing and dropped all investigations.

While any wages over about £2-3 hundred grand tend to make me froth at the mouth (my socialist conscience finds this abhorrent), and while I find noisy pain-in-the-arse tw*t Chris Evans wages utterly ridiculous, I think Bill Gates has done more than almost anyone else in the world to foster wealth and income inequality. I know he gives a lot to charity, but it's easy to do so, when you make a lot more in a day than even the highest paid BBC celebrities do in a year,

M

In reply to captain paranoia:


His auctions on radio 2 raise millions every year and he setup carfest to raise even more.

In reply to captain paranoia:



So that welsh bloke deserves 500k for reading an auto-cue then?

In reply to Postmanpat:
I still don't get what your are saying. If people leave work, sure that removes that proportion from further work success but that only affects a pay gap at the top end if proportionally more potential high fliers stop work than those who remain in work. Maybe I'm being stupid here and you can explain things better. There is a small effect due to the fact that there are more low paid career starters. The numbers leaving acdemia to look after a family are nothing like 25% of women though (another pronlematic assumption of your)

The reported gender pay gaps are for full time academic employees. There is a further gender issue in Universities that more low paid, low job security, part-time staff are women. Yes returners from maternity leave are affected in the main full time figures but on the bassi of that guardian data. There is no significant large number of late returners to full time academic posts to different institutions that I'm aware of but Im sure there must be some. As neil pointed out its hard to secure full time professional jobs these days after long career breaks and the vast majority of permanent academic roles these days need active current research profiles.

In reply to Offwidth:

Maybe I'm being stupid but here's a very simplified example:

1) The workforce is balanced evenly between genders at each stage and they are all paid equally regardless of gender but according to rank (which for the sake for argument we'll equate to age)
So at age 30 there are 100 employees paid £50 each.
By the age of 50 there are 20 employees paid £100 each

Average income for men and women=£58

2) The workforce is evenly gender balanced at age 30 but by the age of 50 half the women have left.
So at the age of 30 there are 50 men paid £50 and 50 women paid £50
At the age of 50 there are 15 men paid £100 and 5 women paid £100.

Average income for men=£61.5
Average income for women=£54.5

Basically if a the cohort of women competing for and therefore obtaining senior and higher paid jobs is reduced then this will surely impact the average pay of women relative to men? Note that in many sectors the few senior people will be paid a massive premium to the many juniors, so if females are under-represented at this level it can have a big impact on the averages.

I'll repeat, I am not confining this argument either to Leicester or to academia on which I make no claim to know the numbers. But I note that Sheryl Sandberg observes that 43% of highly qualified women with children are leaving careers or "off-ramping" for a period of time. This is in the US but it doesn't seem unlikely that the proportion is large in the UK.
It must surely account for a significant part of the gender pay gap?

In reply to Dauphin:

Was that a joke! No wonder they should be on minimum wage. As with the rest of the ridiculous soap actors. The majority of there acting is laughable at best!

In reply to sammy5000:

No, compared to the BBC stars who get £250,000 plus for a couple of afternoons work a week, they were championing the 'working class', as they only get around £200k for working all week.



D

In reply to Offwidth:

As a further comment it always strikes me as the pay gap seems to be more relevant to the public sector ( BBC and universities for example). At one of the private sector employers she worked at ( 20,000 employees worldwide) 10 years ago they had a big review of gender gap issues.she had a substantial pay rise as a result. I would suggest most women in the private sector are on equal pay these days.

It's why the BBC issue is scandalous .

In reply to neilh:

I'd be more interested in comparing technical and management mean salaries through the scales between genders than wailing about supposed wage gaps between presenters & show biz faces - might make good headlines and fire up the outrage bus but it means very little.

D

In reply to handofgod:
A question that I would like answered is 'What do they spend it on?' Or do they save it for their future/family?
I could easily live off a fraction of these amounts.

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:

Bigger, better and nicer stuff than you or me, a house or two and a big phat pension. Still the same type or similar stuff though.

D

In reply to keith-ratcliffe:



With the exception of Chris Evans in his younger and much more remunerative stage, they probably do save a proportion.

For those of us living beyond the influence of London, these figures look substantial. However the money will mostly go on London housing. The average executive salary in the City is £300k and that drives prices skywards. A family home in Wandsworth costs several £million. Goodness knows what they cost in Chelsea. After that I expect they'd budget £50k pa for school fees. And a couple of nice holidays.

It's important to realise that tax is going to reduce those headline incomes by almost 50%, so do your sums and you'll realise that a Winkleman (that's half a mill to you and me) will barely stretch to meet those spending aspirations.

In reply to Dauphin:

I do laugh at the BBC's director saying that they will have completed their review by 2020.

They are so far behind on equalising the difference it is unreal and being at the so called cutting edge of this difference- is a farce.Most big companies have sorted this difference along time ago.

I would agree that technical and management salaries are the ones to look at, I suspect it is a right can of worms.

In reply to neilh:


Can you give an accurate example of scandal?

None of the examples I saw were cases of less money for equal work, because the work people do is quite varied.

The highest earners didn't have an equivalent female performer who was close in terms of reputation, talent, longevity etc.

Last year there was a list of top (lifetime) earning UK comedians and only one woman made the list, Miranda Hart at no 7 and her career has be hugely bolstered by the BBC, leading to her making the list.

Jennifer Saunders was well paid for AbFab but that was a long ago now, it's difficult to think of anyone even close to that level of popularity now.

The problem with a snap shot of a single year is that it doesn't represent true value, it just says that there's a dearth of female entertainers at the moment.

In reply to winhill:

Good points. It's not as if Humfries, Maitliss, Winkleman etc are all 'Pay grade 5' presenters. They effectively have personal contracts, so should be taking any issues up with their agents.

IMHO the fact that Claudia Winkleman gets paid more than Mishal Husein is the real travesty.

In reply to Ridge:



Exactly what my wife and I said on reviewing the list.

In reply to felt:


That's because as a society we value people who can pretend to be nurses more than the genuine article. There's a lot of hand wringing going on about how nurses, teachers etc deserve to be paid more but when the chance comes to actually pay more taxes to fund these things - guess what the public decide to do? They vote to pay less tax so they can spend more money on televisions, Netflix subscriptions and DVDs. If people are upset about the amount of money celebrities earn, they have only themselves to blame.

In reply to Postmanpat:
In the calculation you have had to assume 50% leave to get a gender pay gap less than the actual gap (I already said this factor will have a small effect, around 1-2%, as the real numbers leaving are much less than 10%... academia is unusal in that it's a lousy career to choose if you intend to pack it all in when you have a family .. the reality from the data is fewer women academics have kids and they take much less time on maternity and are much more likely to come back ).

After the calculation you call a bigger difference with no math to show the cause... try it out on paper.... the only reason the gap will increase that way is if men are advantaged in the promotion stakes or more talented women have left the profession than stayed (given so few leave... pretty much all the most talented ones need to be in that group).

The overal gender pay gap is a lot worse at the likes of Leicester than the headline shameful £9.6k number as the lowest paid part-time jobs are not included (in the calculation for the 9.6) and there are more women on such contracts than men (with of the order of 100, 000 academics across the UK delivering scheduled classes on a Zero Hour Contract where in theory they are flexible so don't need to turn up..... this misuse of a ZHC is a bigger shame and scandal for the sector than even the gender pay gap).

In reply to Ridge:


Maitlis is a good example because, although she's claimed to be short changed and her agent has said the BBC lied about how much they were paying others, she does fewer shifts than Evan Davis and he was brought into to replace Paxman to lead the line. It's also not clear if his earnings include Dragon's Den stuff. Yet he's being compared to Maitlis.

Separately it's hard not to perceive this as a convenient conceit for the Tories to attack the BBC with, knowing high salary levels will be unpopular with the licence payer mob (see the comments about 'pretend nurses!'). This will leave the BBC vulnerable to poachers and weaken it's offering, whilst forcing it to adopt a more commercial approach in readiness for removing the licence fee.

In reply to Offwidth:

If I may say so, you often have a habit of obsessing about Leicester and your specific situation. As I have said several times, I am not discussing Leicester or even academia specifically. I am interested in the broader picture. I'll repeat: I am not discussing Leicester or academia!!

You are also doing your usual thing of asking me to make your point for you. Mine was a very simple example to demonstrate the principle. Clearly there will be wrinkles, differences in jobs in general etc etcetc which will impact the actual outcome for better or worse.My principle was not that women leaving or "off ramping" probably account for a significant proportion of the gender gap.

If you want to refute the principle YOU show me more YOUR maths and show specifically which assumptions of mine are wrong.

In reply to Postmanpat:
I actually said your 'maths' is right in that example. The problem was your selected assumed value of 50% for the calculation was way wrong, perhaps from lack of knowledge of how and why people become academics in permanent roles. As I said before those women leaving the profession for good are a red herring in any discussion of the gender pay gap amongst permanent academic staff (they are not always a red herring elsewhere in the economy).

I'm not obessed with Leicester they were just top of the list so its easy to get information from links and to show how bad things can be. In their defence, unlike some Universities they now clearly acknowledge there is a problem (would be nice if some otherwise intelligent people on the internet could be so honest when they are wrong) and they seem to be trying to do something about it now (albeit not as much as some others Unis who gave all their female Profs a pay rise). As for my focus on my own specific situation... maybe thats a bit true .... but I've had a lifelong interest in HE policy issues and have built a wide range of contacts through that.... from involvement in the Unions nationally as a moderate or through links with serious external players in industry, politics, the media and policy groups, to pals in senior management in institutions across the UK, including VC's. I also like arguing with you, you make me think about what to say to the interested and thinking but cautious public view ( you normally project a position of reasonble logic despite yoir love of the coloured fish) I sometimes play around a bit from in-jokes to devil's advocate stuff. I guess UKC is light entertainment for me outside the vital subjects of climbing and guidebooks. For all those reasons I won't be doing sums to 'prove' stuff for you any time soon but I will continue to spar and if you died suddenly I would say lovely things about you here

In reply to winhill:
Maitilis was not even on the list of those earning above £150k( correct me if I am wrong)....that was the point with her. Comparison with Evan is not even the starting point.

Whilst I understand your view point, I reckon you should ask a few women ( both who work in the BBC and those outside it) what they think about the issue of gender pay gaps and whether they exist.Open your eyes a bit.

The sad thing is the BBC think they will be at the cuting edge of the gender pay gap when they have sorted this out. Alot of organisations and companies have dealt with this issue and are way ahead of the game.Good grief even Wimbledon these days has equal prize money for men/women.

In reply to Offwidth:

How many times do I have to repeat "It's NOT about academia"? I am NOT referring to academia?"

The 50% figure was roughly in line with the figure Sheryl Sandberg quotes of 43% for highly qualified women in the US in general , hence it seemed not outrageous to use it. But, anyway, it's the principle that counts.

There are, as I said, lots of other variables, notably the disparity between pay between junior and senior employees. In, for example, the City, the top performers might be paid 30 or 40 times the lower ranks, so if the top performers are predominantly men, because the women have left or "off ramped" , it will have an outsize impact on the average.
I repeat, in case you missed it" I am NOT referring to academia" Academia is not a red herring it's a bright scarlet one!!

In reply to neilh:


No she wasn't but if she put in the same number of hours as Davis he would have been THAT was the point with her.


I think the Maitlis example shows you've not looked at the evidence or even looked at where the evidence might be.


What on earth do you mean even Wimbledon? They were early adopters, although Matthew Syed made a decent case for changing that last year on Women's Hour:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0848mcr starts at 21:30.

Although you might not like his evidence based approach.

In reply to Offwidth:

PS. And I will say lovely things about you too

In reply to winhill:

That link went to a Sex education lesson....

Considering Hall is basically saying we want to sort it out, then they clearly recognise they have an issue. If he had said-- despite the way the figures look we are OK with it and everybody is being paid what they are worth- then you have a point. But the BBC did not say that - they said we have an issue here.It will be interesting to see the figures in a years time.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I was talking about academia, so why are you getting angry with me?

In reply to Offwidth:
Because the discussion was in the context of a thread that started on the BBC and then bacame a more generalised discussion about the gender pay gap. My first post was a general question, albeit sparked by your specific post about Leicester, and I repeatedly said that I was making or asking general points not those specific to academia.

In reply to handofgod:

Someone suggested in one of the newspapers that all male BBC salaries be reduced asap to the lowest female salary doing the same job. Thereafter, in short time salaries should then be cut by 50% and readvertised.

There are probably plenty of competent people out there still willing to take the jobs.

In reply to Jim C:

i think they should give all these expensive BBC jobs to low-paid foreigners willing to live on as little as 100k a year

In reply to Jim C:



This is the Tory recipe to neuter the BBC. But it doesn't relate to Value, why would anyone want to reduce the male wages to the level of the female wages? Greening has already suggested that the ultimate goal is to drive down wages, the talent moving to the commercial stations and the BBC reduced to a shadow of Granada TV.

In reply to winhill:
Yes I don't get this. It is entirely in line with the BBC's remit to employ talent, and in an open market place there is a market value placed on such talent. People here may be all snobbish about Chris Evans or Gary Lineacre - fine. Go and try and do their jobs, why don't you? You just *may* find that part of their talent is making their jobs look rather easier than in fact they are. And there's rather fewer people who can do them; hence the high salaries.

This is part of a Murdoch /Tory conspiracy to grind the BBC down so we are left in a wasteland of Sky sport, Fox news and government press releases. The BBC may not be perfect, but it is the best in the world at what it does, and like the NHS, we can be rightly proud of it.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

The trouble is that the serious question of equal pay for the sexes gets intertwined with our individual liking or not of individual presenters. I quite like Gary Lineker but his salary seems ludicrous. Mark Chapman is every bit as good on MOTD2 IMHO.

Chris Evans? No thanks.

John Humphries - The worst of the Today presenters always tutting and harrumphing, should have been retired ages ago. And on the highest salary!

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:


And the BBC pays far less than market value for many of their presenting staff. Go google what UK exports James Corden and John Oliver make. It makes the BBC list look positively stingy.

In reply to Pedro50:

Yes, John Humphries is the one that sticks in my throat as well!

In reply to winhill:


I think the point is that the BBC salaries have gone crazy and even the female salaries need resetting. Not sure it was a serious expectation, but a thought provoking, or just provoking, comment.

In reply to Jim C:


I was surprised that the most respected current affairs journalists (A Marr, M Hussain, E Davis etc) weren't earning more. I'm sure it's an interesting job and a great platform for your talents but imagine the differential in pay between Stephanie Flanders role as BBC economics editor and her latter day incarnation as economist for JP Morgan.