The night before the great salary row I was talking to a BBC broadcaster who, although her daily show is heard by almost four million people, was not on the list. While angry and bitter to find she earned far less than male peers, she thought it partly her fault: she worked hard, was passionate about her job, then she went home. She could have made a big noise, ratcheting up her profile to leverage more money. But, as she put it, “I cannot be arsed”.
The BBC salaries tell us little about the broader gender pay gap. Now that women are a majority of graduates they account for a bigger proportion of doctors, lawyers and journalists, as reflected in new female leaders in every field from the Metropolitan Police to the Supreme Court. Young women embarking on careers do so on equal terms to men . . . until the minefield called motherhood.
What these salaries illustrate is subtler yet more revealing. James Purnell, the BBC’s director of radio, remarked that individual contract negotiations take into account “talent and personality”, “audience and market value”: deeply subjective criteria. What is “talent”? Any answer is freighted with preconceptions.
“I often handed higher rises to volatile staff who gave me grief
If, say, the task is to get answers from politicians, who is the most talented? Mishal Husain with her quiet yet unstoppable glacial force or John Humphrys with his mano-a-mano harrumph and bluster? Yet it is the latter technique that is always best rewarded — Husain gets £250,000, Humphrys £650,000 — even though it generates more heat than light. Humphrys, like Paxman, kicks up dust, creates Sturm und Drang, has the ego to make himself the story: he is a “Big Beast”.
Big Beasts have a special place in our culture: it’s why, out of the BBC’s top ten earners, only one is a woman. Big Beasts are seen as leaders of their professional tribes and what they say is accorded special importance, even if they haven’t said anything interesting for years. Big Beasts need feeding big money. And since salary is seen as a measure of status, paying them more just makes them bigger: “He earns £1 million so he must be exceptional: give him a huge rise.”
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That is not to say many of them are not wise, talented or loved. It is just their stock is often overvalued: like Chris Evans (earning £2 million-plus) despite crashing the new Top Gear. Or they are treated with undue reverence like Alan Yentob (£250,000 for his obscure vanity project Imagine) and thus never let go.
Can women be Big Beasts? Rarely. They don’t become elders; they just get old. And when it comes to wasting energy on swaggering and willy-waving to get noticed, they too “cannot be arsed”. They would rather do the job, then see their kids and friends, not play the self-aggrandising network game. Besides, throwing your ego around is seen differently if you’re a woman. You are “difficult”, pushy, a diva; a bitch not a beast.
Emily Maitlis, who earns far less than her fellow Newsnight presenters, has said that her biggest mistake was not making demands. “Women sit there waiting for things to come to them and not realising that actually all the men are running off asking for them. You don’t get something because you sit politely and are well-behaved.”
Virtue alone is seldom rewarded. When I edited a magazine and had a pay rise pot to distribute I often found myself giving more to the tricky, volatile staff who’d give me grief, not the solid, quiet ones who’d soldier on. It is human nature: but that does not make it fair.
“Anne Robinson had a reputation as grand, greedy and cold
Is it a myth that women don’t ask for pay rises as often as men? PayScale, an American data firm, says reluctance to ask for more is remarkably similar between the sexes. But there are several differences. First, women are far more likely to give the reason “I’m uncomfortable negotiating my salary”. It is agony to ask someone to define in stark numerical terms what you are worth: the fear your boss will turn around and say “hey, missy, who the hell do you think you are?”, the horror of rejection. L’Oréal’s “Because you’re worth it” is among the most successful ad slogans ever used to advertise to women because it says something they don’t feel, yet long to hear.
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Moreover, PayScale found, women are more likely to be turned down for a pay rise, and penalised by employers who brand them “pushy”, than men. Anne Robinson is known as the toughest woman negotiator in TV, following the advice of her hustling Scouse market-trader mother: “Her golden rule was you should never be embarrassed talking about money and asking for what you deserved.” And for behaving like a Big Beast Robinson had a reputation as grand, greedy and cold. Likewise, when Linda Evangelista remarked “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day” it made outraged headlines around the world. Yet she was then an international supermodel whose image would add lustre to any fashion brand. How dare she know her market worth!
The meek don’t inherit the earth, not without a good agent. And Gary Lineker’s guy, Jon Holmes, has said women mistakenly employ other women who make poor negotiators. Yet Emily Maitlis and the Today programme’s shockingly under-paid Sarah Montague were represented by a man, Alex Armitage. Even he couldn’t persuade the BBC to reveal what his clients’ male colleagues were earning for the same job: “I’ve always been told, no they won’t be upset, it’s comparable.” No one thought the “good girls” who did a fine job, year after year without complaint, would dare to take on the Big Beasts.
