When I won equal pay after nearly a year of fighting, I felt ‘survivor’s guilt’. I knew it was partly my own dogged determination that drove my employer to give in, but it was also my public profile and the solidarity of the women at my back. And by the time I won, I was acutely aware that in workplaces up and down the country, other women were not so lucky.
I was both shocked and moved by the hundreds of letters and emails I received from women in workplaces of every kind. Some had fought battles that ended in resignation or the sack – but most had struggled to make a pay case to an unyielding boss and eventually given up, afraid that insisting would jeopardise their livelihood, their career prospects and even their mental health. Hence my survivor’s guilt: the distress that comes with emerging safe from a traumatic experience that has hurt the less fortunate.
My public battle with the BBC, my employer of 30 years, began in January 2018. Perhaps you saw it in headlines and on news bulletins at the time – ‘BBC China editor Carrie Gracie quits post in equal pay row’. In fact, the battle had begun six months earlier, when the BBC disclosed the salaries of its highest earning employees and I discovered that men in similar posts to mine were earning much more.
That felt like being punched from behind. During the negotiation of terms for my China post, I had said explicitly that equal pay was a condition of doing the job, that I would not take such an important role for less pay than my male equivalents. Yet it now turned out that the male North America editor was being paid almost twice as much as I was. Pay is about how others value us, and if we suddenly discover they value us much less than we thought, it feels like a betrayal.
At 55, it was quite late for me to get real but, like many other women at the BBC, I felt I had to take action. In the summer of 2017, I was among 44 senior women who signed an open letter to the director- general of the BBC, Tony Hall, urging him to deal with the problem of pay inequality. But as the months went by, we gradually realised that polite persuasion was getting us nowhere. At the beginning of 2018, I decided to escalate.
‘The BBC belongs to you, the licence fee payer,’ I wrote in an open letter publicising my resignation from my China role. ‘I believe you have a right to know that it is breaking equality law and resisting pressure for a fair and transparent pay structure.’
Writing that letter was tough. I feared audiences might think I was asking for more money when I was already well paid, that colleagues might be angry with me for washing the BBC’s dirty linen in public, and that bosses might sack me for talking about my workplace without permission. The very act of speaking up about the value of my work felt boastful. I’m glad I overcame all those fears and inhibitions, but even with the protection of a great lawyer, fearless colleagues and a supportive union, the experience of challenging my employer sometimes felt overwhelming. How much worse it must feel for women who have to fight alone.
The BBC has a narrower gender pay gap than many workplaces. It has plenty of high-profile women and, as the national broadcaster, it is committed to freedom of speech. So perhaps I could afford to be less afraid of victimisation than employees in other workplaces. In any case, I wasn’t sacked and nor was I reviled by my colleagues. After resigning as China editor, I went back to working in the BBC’s London newsroom, which is where I still am. I pursued my equal pay complaint, slogging through the internal grievance process for nearly a year and, when that didn’t find me equal, I threatened to take my case to an employment tribunal. It was only after three meetings with the director-general that I received a public apology from the BBC and backdated pay equivalent to that of the North America editor. I donated that money to the UK’s gender equality charity, the Fawcett Society, to help fund legal support for low-paid women. My fight had been about the principle and not the pay-out.
However, I had a nagging sense that there was more to do. I was someone with a lot of privilege and yet even I had found it almost impossible to get equal. I wanted to warn other women to be vigilant and felt the best way would be to tell my story, setting it in the context of a book explaining why unequal pay still happens and what women must do to beat it.
Of course, this kind of discrimination should not be happening at all. The Equality Act 2010 is clear that employers must give men and women equal treatment in the terms and conditions of their employment if they are employed to do ‘equal work’. Yet eight out of 10 UK firms still pay men more than women, and a quarter of companies and public sector bodies have a pay gap of more than 20% in favour of men. The statistics are even more dire for BAME women. Black women, for example, have seen virtually no progress in closing the gender pay gap with white men since the 1990s.
Large employers in the UK are now required to report their gender pay gaps, thanks in part to a campaign fought for by this magazine, and most offer some kind of explanation for them – but I believe pay discrimination is often a dirty secret. It beds into pay structures over decades and few employers conduct the kind of scrupulous, independent audits that might weed it out. In fact, unconscious gender bias and the ‘motherhood penalty’ are so commonplace as to be invisible and instinctive to many employers. the evidence is compelling that bosses who claim they are not susceptible to gender bias are often the worst offenders, because they are so blind to the risks.
Pay secrecy then makes it almost impossible for women to see salary disparities clearly, and an unwieldy and unaffordable legal system makes it difficult for them to correct unjustified disparities, even when they do see them. Moreover, there are no meaningful penalties for employers who weaponise their advantage in resources and information against those female employees who dare to challenge them.
Prevention is the only policy. Throughout our working lives, I believe there are things women can do to protect ourselves. You can say to a prospective employer that equal pay matters to you. Note all of the things you bring to your role and, at the right time, let your boss know. Arm yourself with a paper trail of any discussion about pay by taking notes during or just after, sharing them with relevant people and forwarding a copy to your private email address. Learn to talk about money with colleagues. Many people believe that salary secrecy clauses in their contracts mean they’re not ‘allowed’ to talk about pay, but such clauses are not enforceable if the conversation relates to pay equality. Create a sisterhood at work for support, information sharing and strength in numbers. Join a union where possible.
Some of this is easy and some of it is very hard – but we have no choice. I feel my equal pay fight did raise awareness inside the BBC, and I hope my book will raise awareness beyond, particularly among men and employers. As for women, we just have to put one foot in front of the other and plough on in the hope that our generation will x this problem for the next.
So try not to be disheartened when your employer tells you your work is worth less than a man’s. Hold your ground. And remember that this struggle stretches back to your grandmother and forward to your granddaughter. Grasp your place in history.
'Equal’, by Carrie Gracie, is out now (£18.99, Virago). For more information about your rights, visit fawcettsociety.org.uk