By Gregory Katz
LONDON (AP) --Some of the BBC's most prominent female journalists and TV presenters are banding together to demand that the broadcaster fix its wide gender pay gap immediately rather than in several years as management has proposed.
TV personalities including Clare Balding, Victoria Derbyshire and others wrote an open letter Sunday to the BBC's top manager saying that plans to resolve the company's gender pay gap by 2020 must be accelerated. They pointed out that the Equal Pay Act became the law in 1970.
BBC responded in a statement that it has made "significant changes" in recent years but needs to do more to close the pay gap.
Documents made public last week showed that male BBC TV and radio personalities make substantially more than their female counterparts. The salary disparity came to light after the publicly funded BBC was forced to publish the salary ranges of its best-paid actors and presenters.
The list showed that two-thirds of the highest earners were men, with the highest-paid woman earning less than a quarter of the highest-earning male star. Many BBC men were also found to be receiving far higher salaries than women in comparable jobs.
Education Secretary Justine Greening, who handles matters involving women and equality, told Sky News on Sunday it is "impossible not to be shocked" by the BBC's pay disparity.
She said the salary gap is "very hard to justify." Prime Minister Theresa May has also criticized the pay differential.
The letter to BBC Director-General Tony Hall says the documents confirmed a long-held suspicion that "women at the BBC are being paid less than men for the same work."
Balding, one of BBC's most accomplished TV journalists, said in a pointed tweet that a 2020 target for equal pay isn't good enough, since the Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1970 and the Equality Act was passed in 2010.
"We're standing together to politely suggest they can do better," she said.
The women said they are taking action now so "future generations" of BBC women won't face gender discrimination.
Hall said, when the salary list was published, that the BBC needed to move more quickly on issues of gender and diversity.
The BBC said Sunday that when annual figures are published next year substantial progress on salary equity will have been made.
The broadcaster's statement said its substantial workforce has been "hired over generations" and that the problem is complex and cannot be fixed overnight.
After 20 Years of Acting, Megan Park Finds Her Groove In The Director’s Chair On “My Old Ass”
Megan Park feels a little bad that her movie is making so many people cry. It's not just a single tear either — more like full body sobs.
She didn't set out to make a tearjerker with "My Old Ass," now streaming on Prime Video. She just wanted to tell a story about a young woman in conversation with her older self. The film is quite funny (the dialogue between 18-year-old and almost 40-year-old Elliott happens because of a mushroom trip that includes a Justin Bieber cover), but it packs an emotional punch, too.
Writing, Park said, is often her way of working through things. When she put pen to paper on "My Old Ass," she was a new mom and staying in her childhood bedroom during the pandemic. One night, she and her whole nuclear family slept under the same roof. She didn't know it then, but it would be the last time, and she started wondering what it would be like to have known that.
In the film, older Elliott ( Aubrey Plaza ) advises younger Elliott ( Maisy Stella ) to not be so eager to leave her provincial town, her younger brothers and her parents and to slow down and appreciate things as they are. She also tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad who she meets the next day and discovers that, unfortunately, he's quite cute.
At 38, Park is just getting started as a filmmaker. Her first, "The Fallout," in which Jenna Ortega plays a teen in the aftermath of a school shooting, had one of those pandemic releases that didn't even feel real. But it did get the attention of Margot Robbie 's production company LuckyChap Entertainment, who reached out to Park to see what other ideas she had brewing.
"They were very instrumental in encouraging me to go with it," Park said. "They're just really even-keeled, good people, which makes... Read More