Frauen, die weniger Geld bekommen, aber auch nicht mehr verlangt haben.

Gleich zwei Schlagzeilen machen kürzlich die Runde:

Carrie Grace, ein BBC-Editor in China, empörte sich darüber, dass sie weniger bezahlt bekommt und ein Gender Pay Gap besteht:

Dear BBC Audience,

My name is Carrie Gracie and I have been a BBC journalist for three decades. With great regret, I have left my post as China Editor to speak out publicly on a crisis of trust at the BBC.

The BBC belongs to you, the licence fee payer. I believe you have a right to know that it is breaking equality law and resisting pressure for a fair and transparent pay structure.

In thirty years at the BBC, I have never sought to make myself the story and never publicly criticised the organisation I love. I am not asking for more money. I believe I am very well paid already – especially as someone working for a publicly funded organisation. I simply want the BBC to abide by the law and value men and women equally.

On pay, the BBC is not living up to its stated values of trust, honesty and accountability. Salary disclosures the BBC was forced to make six months ago revealed not only unacceptably high pay for top presenters and managers but also an indefensible pay gap between men and women doing equal work. These revelations damaged the trust of BBC staff. For the first time, women saw hard evidence of what they’d long suspected, that they are not being valued equally.

Many have since sought pay equality through internal negotiation but managers still deny there is a problem. This bunker mentality is likely to end in a disastrous legal defeat for the BBC and an exodus of female talent at every level.

Mine is just one story of inequality among many, but I hope it will help you understand why I feel obliged to speak out.

I am a China specialist, fluent in Mandarin and with nearly three decades of reporting the story. Four years ago, the BBC urged me to take the newly created post of China Editor.

I knew the job would demand sacrifices and resilience. I would have to work 5000 miles from my teenage children, and in a heavily censored one-party state I would face surveillance, police harassment and official intimidation.

I accepted the challenges while stressing to my bosses that I must be paid equally with my male peers. Like many other BBC women, I had long suspected that I was routinely paid less, and at this point in my career, I was determined not to let it happen again. Believing that I had secured pay parity with men in equivalent roles, I set off for Beijing.

In the past four years, the BBC has had four international editors – two men and two women. The Equality Act 2010 states that men and women doing equal work must receive equal pay. But last July I learned that in the previous financial year, the two men earned at least 50% more than the two women.

Despite the BBC’s public insistence that my appointment demonstrated its commitment to gender equality, and despite my own insistence that equality was a condition of taking up the post, my managers had yet again judged that women’s work was worth much less than men’s.

My bewilderment turned to dismay when I heard the BBC complain of being forced to make these pay disclosures. Without them, I and many other BBC women would never have learned the truth.

I told my bosses the only acceptable resolution would be for all the international editors to be paid the same amount. The right amount would be for them to decide, and I made clear I wasn’t seeking a pay rise, just equal pay. Instead the BBC offered me a big pay rise which remained far short of equality. It said there were differences between roles which justified the pay gap, but it has refused to explain these differences. Since turning down an unequal pay rise, I have been subjected to a dismayingly incompetent and undermining grievance process which still has no outcome.

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.

In fact, the only BBC women who can be sure they do not suffer pay discrimination are senior managers whose salaries are published. For example, we have a new, female, Director of News who did not have to fight to earn the same as her male predecessor because his £340 000 salary was published and so was hers. Elsewhere, pay secrecy makes BBC women as vulnerable as they are in many other workplaces.

How to put things right?

The BBC must admit the problem, apologise and set in place an equal, fair and transparent pay structure. To avoid wasting your licence fee on an unwinnable court fight against female staff, the BBC should immediately agree to independent arbitration to settle individual cases. (:…)

Wenn ich das richtig verstehe, dann war sie immer zufrieden mit ihrem Gehalt und hat sie nie darum bemüht in Erfahrung zu bringen, was andere so verdienen. Sie wollte anscheinend sogar die „öffentliche Hand“ nicht weiter belasten.

Jetzt hat sie herausgefunden, dass andere mehr verdienen – BBC sagt in anderen Rollen – und ist nicht mehr zufrieden. Das ist durchaus verständlich.

Ich vermute allerdings, dass die anderen weitaus weniger zufrieden mit ihrem Gehalt waren und die Lohnstrukturen wesentlich besser im Auge behalten haben und dementsprechend auch mehr bekommen haben. Das ihr das nicht früher aufgefallen ist bedeutet aus meiner Sicht, dass sie den Markt nicht kennt, sich auch nie woanders umgeschaut hat und einfach zufrieden war, mit dem, was sie bekommt.

Ein anderer Fall geht in die gleiche Richtung:

Exclusive: Wahlberg got $1.5M for ‚All the Money‘ reshoot, Williams paid less than $1,000

Mark Wahlberg was paid $1.5 million for reshooting his scenes in All the Money in the World, three people familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly about it tell USA TODAY, while Michelle Williams was paid an $80 per diem totaling less than $1,000.

That works out to Williams being paid less than one-tenth of 1% of her male co-star.

But new information reveals ugly math behind the Hollywood victory. The reshoot cost $10 million (a fee put up by producing arm Imperative). In December, Scott told USA TODAY that the undertaking was aided by the fact that „everyone did it for nothing.”

The exchange went as follows:

RIDLEY SCOTT: “The whole reshoot was — in normal terms was expensive but not as expensive as you think. Because all of them, everyone did it for nothing.”

USA TODAY: “Really?”

SCOTT: “No, I wouldn’t get paid, I refused to get paid.”

USA TODAY: “You didn’t pay the actors more to do it?”

SCOTT: “No, they all came in free. Christopher had to get paid. But Michelle, no. Me, no. I wouldn’t do that to — ”

USA TODAY: “The crew, of course, did get paid?”

SCOTT: “Of course.”

USA TODAY has since learned Wahlberg’s team actually negotiated a hefty fee, with the actor paid $1.5 million for his reshoots. Williams wasn’t told.

(…)

In August, Forbes named Wahlberg the highest-paid actor of the year, calculating his pretax and pre-fee earnings at $68 million. The Washington Post first reported Wahlberg’s reshoot fee, noting that the actor “along with manager Stephen Levinson and agency WME, have a reputation in Hollywood for driving a tough bargain.”

Williams previously told USA TODAY that when Scott’s team called to request her time for the reshoot, „I said I’d be wherever they needed me, whenever they needed me. And they could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted. Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.“

Two days ago at the Golden Globes, male and female stars wore black in solidarity with the newly established Time’s Up initiative, which pushes for protection for victims of sexual harassment and gender inequality.

Williams, Globe-nominated for her role in All the Money in the World, was one of them.

Ein ähnlicher Artikel findet sich in einer Vielzahl von anderen Artikel, die es dem Ton nach einen Skandal finden, dass sie quasi nicht bekommt, er aber sehr viel Geld.

Der Skandal liegt wohl darin, dass man ihr nicht gesagt haben soll, dass Wahlberg so viel Geld bekommt. Gleichzeitig findet sich dort auch die Angabe, dass sie von vorneherein gesagt hat, dass sie kein Geld will. Das finde ich auch durchaus verständlich:

Sie engagiert sich in dem Bereich und möchte ein Zeichen setzen. Es kann damit durchaus in ihrem Interesse sein, dass der Reshoot nicht zu teuer wird. Es wäre interessant, wie sie sich selbst dazu äußert und ob sie davon wußte, dass Wahlberg bezahlt wird.

Dennoch scheinen hier einige Artikel anzunehmen, dass man ihr, obwohl sie gar nichts verlangt hat, ausdrücklich auch den Betrag zahlen sollte, den Wahlberg erhalten hat. Aus meiner Sicht eine sehr merkwürdige Vorstellung. Wenn sie kein Geld verlangt und ausdrücklich anbietet, es umsonst zu machen, warum sollte man ihr dann Geld zahlen?

Letztendlich scheint mir dir Begründung zu sein „weil sie eine Frau ist und Frauen ansonsten schon beim Lohn diskriminiert werden“

Aus meiner Sicht ein schwaches Argument.