Equal pay for women wasn't supposed to be like this

[L00b]

How do you think society isn't allowing them to?

Depends which society.

 

willman is close to the mark with his comments in the above, and I could regale you with anecdotes all borne from the stigma (still) attaching with having "only one" child in a certain not-so-distant society west of here.

[ENG601PM]

It's all going horribly wrong for the BBC and the entertainers.

 

A group of 170 women at the BBC have called for an apology, back pay and pension adjustments over claims that the corporation broke equality laws by failing to pay them fairly.

 

In a ratcheting-up of the criticism of the broadcaster by female staff, the BBC Women campaign group has submitted evidence to the influential DCMS committee that they said demonstrated the corporation’s failure to ensure equal pay.

 

The 14 examples they provided included cases of women being paid less than men for the same job and being on inferior contracts without benefits such as sick pay or maternity leave.

 

Eleanor Bradford, BBC Scotland’s health correspondent from 2001-2016, said that she received a pay rise only when she cited equal pay legislation and was still “around £10,000 below some male colleagues who were doing identical correspondent jobs”.

 

Perhaps they should be contacting lawyers instead of the Department of Media Culture and Sport and using a judge to find out if they have been wronged. This appeal to authority instead of the law implies that they are on shaky ground.

Edited January 30, 2018 by ENG601PM

[melthebell]

No gender bias say Auditors PWC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42872363

 

 

On a side note to the above bit about the DCMS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42858624

 

BBC women face 'veiled threats' over equal pay queries

[Resident]

Right here's a scenario for you

 

A company has 2 executives, one male one female.

 

The male exec works his backside off and manages to increase company income by a few percent.

The female exec coasts through and does what's needed but doesn't go above.

 

Come pay review, male gets a significant pay rise whilst the female gets a nominal one.

 

She complains about the pay gap and either her pay is adjusted to the same rate as her male counterpart or he ends up with a pay cut.

 

Where is any of that fair?

 

NB: I'm not suggesting women merely coast through their employment however it does happen and that's the scenario I chose.

[L00b]

Right here's a scenario for you

 

<...>

 

She complains about the pay gap and either her pay is adjusted to the same rate as her male counterpart or he ends up with a pay cut.

That scenario would only occur, if the company has no or insufficient objective criteria on which to base the respective salaries and increases for all its employees, and so cannot justify that difference in pay on a gender-less basis.

 

But if it does, then the company doesn't have to raise the female exec salary (or drop the male exec salary): it's not a gender gap, it's a [qualification and/or experience and/or performance] gap.

 

In my company, we've done the analysis and found that we have a large gender pay gap, as it happens.

 

Yet the pay structure is completely flat and equal opportunities/gender-less: everyone gets paid the exact same for the same 'bits' of qualification, experience and time in service, with a tiny (and I mean tiny) 'bit' for extra performance (the 'bit' attached to enduring low performance is a P45, perhaps unsurprisingly), with a minimum annual rise as 'current plus inflation and an extra year's service'.

 

It's a straightforward cumulating of 'bits': so much for this level of formal training (e.g. RSA II etc.), so much for that professional qualification (e.g. UK trademark attorney), so much per year of service, etc.

 

I'd like to think it's completely fair, we worked hard at making as equal, straightforward and plain as possible (...so we don't waste as much management time doing pay reviews , nor expose ourselves to exactly the situation which your scenario posits).

 

The gender pay gap only occurs, because most of our support staff (on lower salaries) is female and most of our professional staff (on higher salaries) is male: there's absolutely no design, sexism or discrimination to that state of affairs whatsoever, it's just how recruitment, staff staying and staff leaving has panned out over the years.

 

I can't remember the last time I saw a male CV cross my desk or that of our office manager for a secretarial/support position, and I'm going back 9+ years. And we're not about to start paying support staff at fee earner pay rates, nor to drop fee earner pay rates to support staff pay rates, otherwise you might as well shut the place down.

 

All just anecdotal evidence, that there can be a tad more to a situation of 'gender pay gap' than meets the eye

 

It's a bit different for the whole BBC thing started by Carrie Gracie, because I expect that a component of individual salaries is (was?) based on presenters 'stardom' or 'following', i.e. their individual capacity to attract an audience for a program. No disrespect to Carrie Gracie, but I doubt that she could generate the sort of audience which John Humphrys could, on the sole basis of her name/reputation and that difference, to a broadcaster, has a monetary value (which is harder to value than a bit of qualification paper or a length of service). Even at the BBC (because BBC broadcasts are worth £££ on international broadcast markets).

Edited January 30, 2018 by L00b