In July 2017, the BBC, under pressure from the British government to be more transparent about its costs as a publicly funded broadcaster, published a list of its highest-paid stars. It was on that day that Carrie Gracie, the broadcaster's China editor, took up the mantle in the fight for gender pay equality. It would be take more than a year, testifying before Parliament, leading a protest and standing firm during multiple rounds of negotiations before an exhausted Gracie could claim a victory in this ongoing fight.
The list focused on on air talent making more than one hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year. Sixty-two men and thirty-four women qualified for the list. The highest earning woman was making £1.7 million less than the highest-earning man. A scandal and media frenzy immediately broke out as some of the BBC's most famous female names were conspicuously absent.
The BBC had four foreign editors - one covering each of the Middle East, North America, China and Europe. Two men and two women. The two men were both paid well over £50,000 with one making well over £200,000. They were both on the list published by the BBC. Neither Gracie and Katya Adler, European Editor, were present on the list. Gracie calculated that she and Adler were getting paid somewhere around fifty per cent less than their male colleagues.
Gracie stared her career at the BBC in China in 1987 and by 1991 was a China correspondent with the BBC world service. She worked hard to learn the language and the culture eventually marrying a Chinese citizen and having children in China. She continued up the ladder becoming Beijing bureau chief in 1997. She moved back to Britain in 1999 when her first child, a daughter, was diagnosed with leukemia. It was then that she moved into television becoming a morning presenter on the BBC’s new network, continuing to cover China from London. In 2005, she embarked on a 10-year to chronicle the transformation of a rural community. She ultimately received a Peabody Award for “White Horse Village.” Along the way, in 2011, she was also diagnosed with breast cancer. She was back at work in 8 months following a double mastectomy and extensive chemotherapy.
In 2013, the BBC offered the then 51-year-old the new position of China editor. Since first covering China in 1987, the country had transitioned into a world power economically and, increasingly, militarily. Gracie says she accepted on the condition that she be paid as much as her male colleagues. BBC management assured her she would be and offered her £120,000, eventually raising it to £130,000 to cover the cost of boarding school in England for her teenage son. Gracie joined the European editor, the Middle Eastern editor and the North American editor as one of four people at the BBC coordinating the news for a major geographic region.
After the list was published, Gracie signed a letter written by a group of colleagues calling themselves the BBC Women. The letter was sent to Tony Hall, the corporation’s director general. Gracie commented in an article published by the New Yorker, “once you know the truth what are you going to do with it? Are you going to quit, live with it or try to act?”
A few weeks later, Gracie wrote privately to Tony Hall. The BBC then offered her a 33% raise - a substantial amount but one that kept her salary far lower than her male peers. She turned it down and filed a grievance. She resigned her position as China editor and returned to London to resume her role as a presenter in the TV news room.
The fight was on. And it would be a long one.
Enough is enough. The rise of China is one of the biggest stories of our time and one of the hardest to tell. I cannot do it justice while battling my bosses and a byzantine complaints process. Last week I left my role as China editor and will now return to my former post in the TV newsroom where I expect to be paid equally.
For BBC women this is not just a matter of one year’s salary or two. Taking into account disadvantageous contracts and pension entitlements, it is a gulf that will last a lifetime. Many of the women affected are not highly paid “stars” but hard-working producers on modest salaries. Often women from ethnic minorities suffer wider pay gaps than the rest.
This is not the gender pay gap that the BBC admits to. It is not men earning more because they do more of the jobs which pay better. It is men earning more in the same jobs or jobs of equal value. It is pay discrimination and it is illegal.
On learning the shocking scale of inequality last July, BBC women began to come together to tackle the culture of secrecy that helps perpetuate it. We shared our pay details and asked male colleagues to do the same.
Meanwhile the BBC conducted various reviews. The outgoing director of news said last month, “We did a full equal pay audit which showed there is equal pay across the BBC.” But this was not a full audit. It excluded the women with the biggest pay gaps. The BBC has now begun a ‘talent review’ but the women affected have no confidence in it. Up to two hundred BBC women have made pay complaints only to be told repeatedly there is no pay discrimination at the BBC. Can we all be wrong? I no longer trust our management to give an honest answer.
….
“We have felt trapped. Speaking out carries the risk of disciplinary measures or even dismissal; litigation can destroy careers and be financially ruinous. What’s more the BBC often settles cases out of court and demands non-disclosure agreements, a habit unworthy of an organisation committed to truth, and one which does nothing to resolve the systemic problem.”
Gracie instantly became the standard-bearer for the fight. When she quit, more than 130 female broadcasters and producers at the BBC released a statement criticizing the BBC for their handling of the situation and climbing that “up to 200 women that we know of in various grades and roles across the BBC” had made complaints alleging pay discrimination. #IStandWithCarrie became a popular hashtag. Gracie now had the support of hundreds of “BBC Women” supporting each other and strategizing through private chat groups and email exchanges. Colleagues began sharing salary information to uncover inequities.
At the end of January 2018, Gracie appeared before a parliamentary committee conducting a hearing to examine the issue of pay at the BBC. She testified for 2 1/2 hours. Four of the BBC’s senior executives also appeared at the hearing. Prior the hearing, the BBC, under increasing pressure from the government, the press, the public, and its female employees, had published results from what it described as an “equal pay audit.” Although the findings illustrated a gender-based pay gap of 9%, the BBC claimed that “there does not appear to be any form of systemic discrimination against either men or women.”
Responding to Gracie’s grievance, the BBC acknowledged having “inadvertently underpaid” her since 2014 and offered her more than £100,000 in back pay. Gracie turned down the offer. The BBC also claimed that the role of China editor was not as demanding as the one done by her male colleague covering North America. Gracie vowed to fight on until the BBC agreed to acknowledge that her work “was of equal value to the men who I served alongside as an international editor.”
During the hearing Gracie pointed out, “we are not in the business of producing toothpaste or tires at the BBC,” she said. “Our business is truth. If we are not prepared to look at ourselves honestly, how can we be trusted to look at anything else in our reporting honestly.” The Guardian described her testimony this way, “In turn both forensic and passionate, Gracie singlehandedly very publicly exposed the gender pay gap at the BBC. By the end, the broadcaster’s reputation was in tatters.”
Like many organizations, the BBC had allowed hiring managers to negotiate contracts as they saw firm with little oversight. Management described many of the highest packages as “anomalies” but there was no getting around the fact that the “anomalies’ all appeared to awarded to men. The corporation was clearly trying to avoid what could become historic levels of liability under British laws that awarded as much as six years’ worth of back pay, including pension restitution. For years, the BBC had been quietly settling discrimination and harassment claims using nondisclosure agreements as shields.
The pressure on the BBC was continuing to mount. On March 8, International Women’s Day at exactly 9% short of an average working day - BBC employees gathered in front of Broadcasting House. Gracie led the protestors - many holding white placards emblazoned with an equal sign - in a chant during the protest. According to BBC women, more than 1,000 women had asked the corporation to review their pay levels.
Still things dragged on. At the end of May as the deadline for her agreement passed without a resolution, Gracie went on leave from the BBC. She was contemplating a lawsuit. Then Tony Hall reached out directly to unstick negotiations. On June 29, they released a joint statement. It read in part, “the BBC acknowledges that Carrie was told she would be paid in line with North America Editor. The BBC is committed to the principle of equal pay and in acting in accordance with our values. The BBC acknowledges the specific circumstances related to Carrie’s appointment, apologises for underpaying Carrie, and has now put this right.”
Gracie made a short statement to the press. She said, “Today at the BBC I can say I’m equal, and I would like women in workplaces up and down this country to be able to say the same.”She donated the settlement - like more than $400,000 to the Fawcett Society, a charity established in 1866 by suffragettes with the stipulation that it be used to provide” legal assistance to low-paid women and to fund strategic litigation.
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