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The BBC has recently been reporting on it's own gender pay gap. In July 2017 it was revealed that Chris Evans tops list of best-paid stars with the top 7 being male. The next day the BBC announced that Male presenters could face wage cut and shortly after Female stars call on BBC 'to sort gender pay gap now' and then the BBC announces sweeping pay reviews after star salary row.

More recently the BBC China editor Carrie Gracie quits post in equal pay row and then Six male BBC presenters agree to pay cuts andJohn Humphrys says he will earn 'hugely less', and also said that he had, in fact, taken a total of three pay cuts and that "it seemed entirely proper to me that I should take a few pay cuts"

A couple of days ago, a BBC review finds 'no gender bias in on-air pay decisions', including the statement "there are "logical and non-gender related reasons" for the differences." Tony Hall said "Today's report does not find evidence of gender bias in decision-making.

However:

Before the report was published, BBC Women... said it had "no confidence" in the PwC review. The group said it had not been consulted and felt it had "been excluded from the process".

I may be mistaken, but I would not expect an independent investigation to consult employees?

In addition, after publication, Jane Garvey, a member of BBC Women said

"The report would say that, wouldn't it? This is a PwC report commissioned by the BBC and, without being overly cynical, I might venture to suggest that the PwC has delivered the report the BBC has asked for."

Sargon of Akkad made a video on this, but unfortunately didn't link to any of the articles mentioned, so it's quite hard to confirm he is not cherry picking.

The conclusion seems unclear - an independent investigation revealed there was no gender bias in pay decisions, and Tony Hall confirmed this - but BBC Women still seem to be against the report, and it is assumed that the male stars are still receiving substantial pay cuts.

Is there any more evidence around this which clears things up?

DevSolar
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Tim
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    To be fair, if you're going to check the salary vs the curriculum vs the effective responsibility of a employee , you don't really need to consult then if you keep proper, accurate documentation. I've seen a fair share of those cases of "discrimination" that were in fact comparing apples to oranges, like a male college teacher vs the coffee lady, so I tend to be skeptical about those types of claims. I'm not saying that discrimination doesn't exist, but I have my doubts if it isn't experiencing a bit of over reporting. – T. Sar Feb 05 '18 at 09:01
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    @T.Sar We should differentiate between the general pay gap discussion in society at large - which sometimes does compare apples to oranges, with the reasoning that it is a societel bias that women get apples in the first place (or organges, if you actually prefer apples) - and specific accusations of discrimination in pay (which the BBC issue seems to be; at least the Carrie Gracie case). This question would definitely benefit from a clearer explanation on what exactly "pay gap" means in this context. – tim Feb 05 '18 at 11:24
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    We can categorically exclude Sargon of Akkad a as reliable source of facts. He may be right in this particular instance (I haven’t checked) but he’s infamous for lying by cherry-picking and other deceptive techniques. – Konrad Rudolph Feb 05 '18 at 11:24
  • @T.Sar And I don't think that employees wanted to be included in the process because of information they can provide, but because they do not trust the BBC to impartially investigate itself (or be investigated by a firm they pay). As I understand it, there is still a [government investigation](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-gender-pay-gap-employees-apology-bbc-women-nuj-tony-hall-select-committee-a8184306.html) into the whole issue, so this might be off-topic because it is about current events. – tim Feb 05 '18 at 11:26
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    @KonradRudolph his argument seems reasonable, but his lack of links to each article he included, his usage of the Daily Mail as a source and the title of his video are all red flags. – Tim Feb 05 '18 at 12:39
  • @tim re the Carrie Gracie case, she was China correspondent. Sargon claims that she was paid less than the North American correspondent because a) he was already on a higher salary from his previous role when he started it and b) the North America correspondent does a lot more work. Unfortunately time constraints mean I’ve not been able to look into his claims due to his lack of sorce links. – Tim Feb 05 '18 at 12:52
  • @tim this China correspondent vs north American correspondent is a good case of apple vs oranges. You can't really compare the two positions - while they have the same concept of work, what they actually do is pretty different. It is no different than complaining about the CEO's secretary getting a bigger salary than the front desk attendant - while the jobs are conceptually similar, they are in practice totally different beasts. – T. Sar Feb 05 '18 at 13:32
  • @T.Sar precisely. Unfortunately, Sargon did not provide his sources so all I have is him claiming it. Hopefully any answer would expand on that. – Tim Feb 05 '18 at 13:42
  • @T.Sar Gender discrimination may mean men are more easily considered for promotion than women, so even if you were to show differences in roles explain differences in reward, you'd still need to address whether there may be discrimination behind the differences in roles. – gerrit Feb 05 '18 at 15:11
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    @gerrit Not in my experience. Both my CEO and my sister gathered promotion after promotion until they got where they are, but by their outstanding work and their agressive negotiation. So did my mother. Of course there _is_ some discrimination by some people, but it doesn't seem to be near the magnitude social media pushes it to be. Also, men are heavily discriminated in some fields, too - when was the last time you saw a male kindergarden teacher? A female in a STEM field gets praise for being brave, etc. A male in a typical female-oriented field gets harassed by not being manly enough . – T. Sar Feb 05 '18 at 16:35
  • @gerrit As another example - my SO is the main breadwinner from our residence. I have a day job, but I'm the parent responsible for school duty, doctor trips, etc. She gets praise from strangers for being a female entrepeneur. I get harassed because somehow I'm a "failure as a male" because of our arrangement. I'm all in favor for females getting more space in the industry, but until we let males do some tipically-female jobs we won't see that situation changing soon. – T. Sar Feb 05 '18 at 16:38
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    @T.Sar Personal experiences / anecdotes are not useful on Skeptics Stack Exchange. If you have evidence about the gender pay gap, please provide an answer to this or other questions such as [this one](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/5159/5337) or [this one](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/908/are-women-underpaid-relative-to-men). – gerrit Feb 05 '18 at 17:17
  • One more related question: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/20704/5337 – gerrit Feb 05 '18 at 17:24
  • @T.Sar as said personal anecdotes are completely irrelevant to the question about systemic bias in the BBC. Also you provided no evidence of men being discriminated against in typically female dominated roles - I would have thought quite the opposite given current recruitment aims. Some evidence for that would be appreciated. I’m sorry for your experience with harassment, but again there’s no evidence your experience is representative of the population (and certainly isn’t relevant to this discussion). Also I’m not sure what you mean by we’re not letting men do female dominated roles? – Tim Feb 05 '18 at 17:36
  • I really don't understand the basis for their complaint. Basically I read it as "_The independent third party excluded our input from an internal group that is central to the investigation._" ... Duh. And then "_This is a PwC report commissioned by the BBC and, without being overly cynical, I might venture to suggest that the PwC has delivered the report the BBC has asked for._" I mean, I get what they're saying; but at the same time; of course they gave BBC the report they asked for. BBC commissioned an independent third party investigation and got one. – JMac Feb 05 '18 at 17:45
  • @JMac Only if you trust that a PwC report paid for by the BBC is independent and not in any way biased to what the BBC wants to hear. – gerrit Feb 05 '18 at 20:28
  • @gerrit I got that, just their wording is hilarious. It's so vague that it couldn't _not_ apply. Sure, it would be more fair if someone external to the BBC would pay for it; but why the heck would anyone do that unless they had the opposite bias? – JMac Feb 05 '18 at 20:39
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    @JMac In some ways I wish the report had found discrimination, and we could watch BBC Women try to backpedal on their preemptive rejection of the report. – Tim Feb 05 '18 at 21:06
  • @gerrit I agree that they aren't useful as _answers_, thus the comment. – T. Sar Feb 06 '18 at 11:54
  • This question is too broad. "Discrimination" can include historic and systemic discrimination, which are believed to be the causes here, but some commentators are clearly thinking of direct individual level sexism. – dont_shog_me_bro May 03 '18 at 10:52

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