Speaker 1: Last summer, a firestorm erupted in the UK when the
Speaker 1: BBC disclosed how much it was paying its top talent.
Speaker 1: That's because the news outlets numbers showed a stark contrast
Speaker 1: between how much its male and female employees were making.
Speaker 1: The fallout was swift. The BBC received waves of bad press,
Speaker 1: along with two hundred equal pay complaints from employees. It
Speaker 1: was just one example of how the country is struggling
Speaker 1: with a global problem, the gender pay gap. So how
Speaker 1: has the UK come closer to closing that gap? How
Speaker 1: does this compare to the United States, and what are
Speaker 1: other countries doing to give equal pay for equal work.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Benchmark. I'm Scott Lanman, economics editor with Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News and Washington. So globally women make less than men,
Speaker 1: and both in the United States and the UK women
Speaker 1: make a little under twenty less than men, but some
Speaker 1: countries are working to close the gender pay gap. Here
Speaker 1: to tell us more is Bloomberg reporter Rebecca Greenfield. Rebecca
Speaker 1: is also the host of The Paycheck, a limited series
Speaker 1: podcast that has just published its grand finale. Rebecca, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show. Thank you so much for having
Speaker 1: me so. First of all, Rebecca, congratulations on finishing up
Speaker 1: the Paycheck. It's a fascinating podcast. It's really enjoyable. I
Speaker 1: really liked it, and you and your colleagues just did
Speaker 1: an amazing job, you know, taking an issue that numbers
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that I covered on a day
Speaker 1: to day basis on the Economy team, and yet you know,
Speaker 1: really going into the stories behind it, making it come
Speaker 1: to life and finding so many angles that you know
Speaker 1: that I learned a lot, and I think anyone who
Speaker 1: listens to it will learn a lot too. So congratulations
Speaker 1: on it. Thank you so much. That's that's really it's
Speaker 1: really nice to hear that. So first of all, I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering why did you decide to do the podcast.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people know this big headline number,
Speaker 1: right that women make less than men, but we really
Speaker 1: wanted to get beyond that. We wanted to get into
Speaker 1: why that happens now, the history of it, and maybe
Speaker 1: even some solutions. So I think if you can come
Speaker 1: out of the show just knowing one thing that you
Speaker 1: didn't know before about the gender pay gap, then we've
Speaker 1: done our job, and I think most people find more
Speaker 1: than one now, Rebecca, this was also had a personal
Speaker 1: angle for you too. Can you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. Yeah, so in the first episode, I
Speaker 1: tell a story about my life. It's about my mom
Speaker 1: and she sued her employers for paid discrimination when I
Speaker 1: was in middle school. So we tell the story about that,
Speaker 1: about how she was a surgeon and she found out
Speaker 1: that she made five times less than her colleagues for
Speaker 1: a certain work she was doing, and she sued and
Speaker 1: it was almost a ten year battle which ended up
Speaker 1: getting her a settlement. But we also talked about how
Speaker 1: kind of it affected her personally. She talks about it
Speaker 1: as her third job and as someone who grew up
Speaker 1: in that time, how having a mom like this made
Speaker 1: me view the world. Yeah, it was just a really
Speaker 1: powerful way to to start the podcast, and you know,
Speaker 1: we all really appreciate you sharing that with the public
Speaker 1: and the whole world. Basically for us today, I wanted
Speaker 1: to also start by having you set up a clip
Speaker 1: from the Paycheck. So tell me first, who is Carrie Crazy?
Speaker 1: So Kara Gracy was one of four international editors at
Speaker 1: the BBC the British podcasters, So she had a really
Speaker 1: pretty big important job and she worked at the BBC
Speaker 1: for all of her career over thirty years, and she
Speaker 1: moved to China a few years ago for this prestigious position.
Speaker 1: And then this summer everything kind of came crashing down
Speaker 1: when the BBC had to disclose the pay of its
Speaker 1: top talent, and she found out she was making fifty
Speaker 1: percent less than the men doing the same jobs. So
Speaker 1: she resigned. All right, let's hear that clip. I was
Speaker 1: for four years leading our China coverage. That's carry testifying
Speaker 1: in front of British Parliament a few months ago. There
Speaker 1: are significant risks in our China coverage. I dealt with them.
Speaker 1: I did a good job twice. I've been a world
Speaker 1: Television society. Normal need for the BBC for specialist journalists
Speaker 1: of the year. It's just and you know what, I
Speaker 1: get me emotional. But what I really want to say
Speaker 1: about this equal pay problem at the BBC is what
Speaker 1: it forces the BBC to do is to retrofit in defense,
Speaker 1: you know, defenses just to the cations of the indefensible.
Speaker 1: The BBC gets most of its funding from the public.
Speaker 1: Its newest charter required the broadcaster to reveal how much
Speaker 1: it pays its top talent. The government thought that people
Speaker 1: should know where their money was going. It turned out
Speaker 1: it was mostly going to men. The BBC had a
Speaker 1: wide pay gap at its most senior levels. The top
Speaker 1: man made over two million pounds, the highest paid woman
Speaker 1: just a quarter of that. So Rebecca, this wasn't just
Speaker 1: about the BBC. Right. When did the law to disclose
Speaker 1: how much British companies pay men and women go into effect? Right,
Speaker 1: So the BBC was required to disclose pay of its
Speaker 1: top talent. But a separate law went into effect in
Speaker 1: the UK April of this year where companies with over
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty employees had to publicly disclose their gender
Speaker 1: pay gaps. So that's the difference unadjusted raw difference between
Speaker 1: what men and women make in a given company. And
Speaker 1: this went into effect April of this year. And what
Speaker 1: was the BBC's response to this controversy. So the BBC
Speaker 1: says that you know, it's working with a gender pay
Speaker 1: gap like the rest of other companies, and they're committed
Speaker 1: to gender equality and they resolved a lot of the
Speaker 1: equal pay complaints and they say they want to close
Speaker 1: their gender pay gap. By Gracy thinks it's not enough.
Speaker 1: She testified in front of Parliament and said that you know,
Speaker 1: she they offered her raise, but it still wasn't equal,
Speaker 1: and she just wants to be valued for who she is.
Speaker 1: So there's kind of this tension happening. It sounds like
Speaker 1: we could come back in and have another look at
Speaker 1: this whole issue. What about the other companies that have
Speaker 1: reported in the UK? What have those reports shown? So
Speaker 1: over ten thousand companies have reported, and basically the majority
Speaker 1: of companies and the majority of industries have found that
Speaker 1: women make less than men. I mean, it's not a surprise,
Speaker 1: but some of the pay gaps are really big. So
Speaker 1: Goldman Sacks, which is another company that we feature in
Speaker 1: one of our episodes. In the first episode, it has
Speaker 1: like over at pay gap, So it's like a really
Speaker 1: stark difference between what men and women are making. What
Speaker 1: it doesn't show these numbers don't show is like why
Speaker 1: that's happening generally. It just means women are holding most
Speaker 1: of the lowest paying jobs and then companies kind of
Speaker 1: have to decide where to go from there. So it's
Speaker 1: really interesting that the UK has this law and all
Speaker 1: these companies have given these numbers, But is there any
Speaker 1: kind of enforcement mechanism for having such a big pay
Speaker 1: gap and penalties or anything like that. Or is it
Speaker 1: just about shaming these companies into doing something. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: We we call it a shaming initiative in the episode.
Speaker 1: It really is kind of this idea that in theory,
Speaker 1: if your company has a huge pay gap, you're gonna
Speaker 1: not want to look bad and try to close it.
Speaker 1: I also think it's more of a diagnostic tool at
Speaker 1: this point. You know, we're trying to see what the
Speaker 1: problem is and tease it out from this big national
Speaker 1: number we're normally hearing. But yeah, there's no enforcement for
Speaker 1: closing the pay gap or anything like that. It's really
Speaker 1: a blunt instrument. Talk about blunt. I mean I found
Speaker 1: a lot of the a lot of your reporting to
Speaker 1: be very blunt and the interviews to be blunt in
Speaker 1: how companies are facing up to these issues. One segment
Speaker 1: I found very fascinating was a woman who was the
Speaker 1: CEO of a bank in the UK talk about the
Speaker 1: pay gap at her company, and it turned out that
Speaker 1: a lot of men were at the higher levels and
Speaker 1: women were at the on the lower rungs of that bank.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about that and
Speaker 1: was that segment challenging to produce in any way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we I believe you're talking about the segment we
Speaker 1: did with the CEO of Virgin Money. Jane and Gaudia
Speaker 1: talked to us and yeah, they're big financial services company
Speaker 1: in the UK and they reported a thirty three percent
Speaker 1: pay gap, so that's big and bigger than the national average.
Speaker 1: And when they dug into it, they found that it's
Speaker 1: because women are generally clustered in these customer service jobs,
Speaker 1: which are the lower paying jobs, and men generally have
Speaker 1: the highest paying jobs. So, you know, how do they
Speaker 1: fix it? And yeah, it was really interesting to hear
Speaker 1: the CEO talk about it because she was saying how she,
Speaker 1: you know, needs to get more men to want to
Speaker 1: do these jobs. But you could see how that would
Speaker 1: be hard because first of all, they're not very well paid,
Speaker 1: but also there's just this idea that this is a
Speaker 1: woman's job and so far they really haven't had much luck.
Speaker 1: But I also found it fascinating from the perspective it
Speaker 1: that you had a woman CEO talk about this and
Speaker 1: how difficult it was from her perspective even to overcome
Speaker 1: this issue. I mean, did didn't you find that with
Speaker 1: with other women that you had interviewed also. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the general feelings from women is that it's really tough.
Speaker 1: And I think, yeah, their company does all the right things,
Speaker 1: you know, all the things we hear that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do, having initiatives and having programs to get more
Speaker 1: women into senior roles and the females yo, and yeah,
Speaker 1: none of this is enough, and I think, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a bit shocking. Let's talk about the United States a bit.
Speaker 1: I know we have a pay gap here. I've edited
Speaker 1: stories about it. You've written about it too, uh and um,
Speaker 1: you know we have your podcast now to talk about it.
Speaker 1: And yet this issue goes back over a hundred years.
Speaker 1: You actually went back to the Civil War and I
Speaker 1: found that really interesting. How how did you come across
Speaker 1: this history. So there's this letter that was written to
Speaker 1: the New York Times. It's it's anonymous, but probably by
Speaker 1: a group of women arguing that they want equal pay
Speaker 1: for equal work. And a lot of the language they're
Speaker 1: using sounds so similar to the stuff we hear now,
Speaker 1: but it's it's from the Civil War era. It's these
Speaker 1: women who worked in the federal government and they were
Speaker 1: working secretary jobs basically, and these were jobs that were
Speaker 1: held by men, and they were making half as much
Speaker 1: as the men were, and they were saying, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: We are doing the same work. But the reason that
Speaker 1: they had been hired in the first place is because
Speaker 1: they could be hired for cheaper There were only so
Speaker 1: many jobs open to women, so any job a woman
Speaker 1: can get, she was going to take for pretty much
Speaker 1: any rates. So they were making less money. They got
Speaker 1: hired because they could be making less money, and eventually
Speaker 1: they were like, this is ridiculous, So they started petitioning
Speaker 1: the government for equal pay. And so you have this
Speaker 1: equal pay debate happening a hundred fifty years ago, which
Speaker 1: is really fascinating to think about it in the context
Speaker 1: of now where we still have not solved this problem.
Speaker 1: And did you know about this before you worked on
Speaker 1: the podcast? This letter is kind of lawre in the
Speaker 1: equal pay world. I mean not law, but it's something
Speaker 1: that if you do enough googling and researching, you come
Speaker 1: across it. And so I decided I was decided that
Speaker 1: there must be a story behind this letter. So I
Speaker 1: went out and found a historian, Jessica Zappero, who wrote
Speaker 1: a book about this time period and She told me
Speaker 1: a lot about what was going on in this time,
Speaker 1: and a lot of what happened actually lead to the
Speaker 1: development of the way our economy is now and why
Speaker 1: women do certain jobs and why those jobs pay less. Well,
Speaker 1: it might be lore in the field of studying the
Speaker 1: gender pay gap. To me, it was new. I learned something,
Speaker 1: and I found that really interesting, so I appreciated that.
Speaker 1: Let's fast forward to today. You also talk about some
Speaker 1: of the arguments that you hear the people used to
Speaker 1: try to discredit the pay gap and talk about why
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter or why you shouldn't look at it
Speaker 1: this way. What did you make of all that. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who like to tell me
Speaker 1: that I don't know what I'm talking about, and that
Speaker 1: the pay gap is a myth and that it's not real,
Speaker 1: and that it exists for reasons that make complete sense. Um.
Speaker 1: I think these people basically say that when you control
Speaker 1: for certain things like job type or hours worked or
Speaker 1: having children, that the pay gap disappears, so we don't
Speaker 1: really have a problem them. I have so many responses
Speaker 1: to that. First of all, there's no way no matter
Speaker 1: how much you control, there is always a gap between
Speaker 1: what men and women make it never disappears. But I
Speaker 1: actually think it's worth considering that we have this data point.
Speaker 1: We know that this number exists and it's persisted, and
Speaker 1: I want to know why that exists, what does it mean?
Speaker 1: And I think when you dig deeper, it isn't as
Speaker 1: simple as just women are making choices to take lower
Speaker 1: paying jobs. And I hope that you can learn that
Speaker 1: from the show. And the United States doesn't really have
Speaker 1: this kind of push to address the pay gap that
Speaker 1: the UK had, I mean they passed a law, of
Speaker 1: the US is just sort of sitting around waiting for
Speaker 1: something to bubble up, Is that right? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we do have some equal pay laws on the books.
Speaker 1: Equal pay for equal work is a law and you
Speaker 1: can't discriminate. But yeah, there's no big transparency law or
Speaker 1: anything like that. There are some state and municipal laws
Speaker 1: that are taking some small steps to address the pay gap.
Speaker 1: I'd say the most popular law right now are these
Speaker 1: salary history bands. So this is cities and some states
Speaker 1: that are saying you cannot ask people what they made
Speaker 1: at their previous jobs. And the point of that is
Speaker 1: basically because often women and other underpaid groups if they're
Speaker 1: being discriminated against at their previous job, and then they
Speaker 1: go to the next job and you're basing their salary
Speaker 1: off their old job, You're going to continue perpetuating that
Speaker 1: pay gap. So it's an attempt to kind of stop
Speaker 1: that from happening. But this is not widespread and actually
Speaker 1: the business community is really fighting it. Yeah, it's more
Speaker 1: on a small scale anyway than a national scale. Now
Speaker 1: there's one other country you delved into that's really fascinating
Speaker 1: because it's small. They have many women in influential positions,
Speaker 1: and yet the paycup still hasn't closed. Tell us about
Speaker 1: Iceland and why it hasn't been able to close the cap. So.
Speaker 1: Iceland has a lot of equal pay laws, some of
Speaker 1: the ones similar to hear in the US. But they
Speaker 1: have a new law that's pretty interesting. So whereas the
Speaker 1: UK law is diagnostic, you know, it says this is
Speaker 1: the problem and hopes companies will just do something about it,
Speaker 1: Iceland's new law actually compels companies to do something. So
Speaker 1: Iceland is requiring companies with over twenty five employees to
Speaker 1: explain any differences between what men and women make, and
Speaker 1: if explanation isn't good enough, the company has to fix
Speaker 1: the pay gap, and that can be by paying women
Speaker 1: more or cutting salaries, or doing whatever you have to
Speaker 1: do to make that disparity go away. So, in one example,
Speaker 1: the Customs Office found that it was paying men and
Speaker 1: women in a certain office less money, and they had
Speaker 1: this explanation for why because the men were close to
Speaker 1: retirement and they had worked in the field and now
Speaker 1: they were coming back to the office. And the Iceland
Speaker 1: was like, you know, no, it's not okay. You have
Speaker 1: to pay them the same. So that's something that is
Speaker 1: taking it a step further. But it's a new law,
Speaker 1: so we don't really know how it will work. So
Speaker 1: we need some more time when we can get to
Speaker 1: the paycheck part two to figure out how it's all working. So,
Speaker 1: after doing all this reporting and thinking about the solutions
Speaker 1: that we've talked about, what seems to you like the
Speaker 1: best way or ways to close the pay gap. Do
Speaker 1: we need stronger laws, do we need stronger enforcement. Is
Speaker 1: it just a matter of having more women in the
Speaker 1: kinds of positions that would influence pay at employers? What
Speaker 1: do you think? So this might be a not very
Speaker 1: satisfying answer, but it's like all of it and none
Speaker 1: of it, you know, So the forces that cause the
Speaker 1: pay gap, basically sexism, when you boil it down, are
Speaker 1: very strong. And you know, no one law or one
Speaker 1: company policy is really going to be able to undo
Speaker 1: all the attitudes that we have about men and women
Speaker 1: and what they're supposed to do. And I think that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of laws that can help, and
Speaker 1: I'm I think that I'm in favor of that. I
Speaker 1: think that companies need to do things, and I think
Speaker 1: that more than anything is we need to change people's
Speaker 1: attitudes and the way they view the genders in the workplace,
Speaker 1: which I realized as a very tall order. Do you
Speaker 1: think they're changing. I think the one heartening thing is
Speaker 1: that in the last six months we've seen how something
Speaker 1: like Me Too has been able to change people's attitudes.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if we'll know the actual effects
Speaker 1: of that, but I think one thing it has done
Speaker 1: is shown that the experiences of women and men at
Speaker 1: work are different and that can affect their careers and
Speaker 1: their lives. So at least we're starting to change that attitude.
Speaker 1: Rebecca Greenfield, host of The Paycheck, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us on Benchmark. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to urge everybody to check out The
Speaker 1: Paycheck if you haven't already. As soon as this podcast
Speaker 1: is over, go to iTunes, go to Spotify, where if
Speaker 1: you find podcasts, search for The Paycheck on Bloomberg and
Speaker 1: listen to it. It's got six episodes. They're all fascinating,
Speaker 1: they're all fantastic, and we're grateful for Rebecca to share
Speaker 1: some of what she found on Benchmark. Benchmark will be
Speaker 1: back next week. Until then, you can find us on
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, our Bloomberg app, and
Speaker 1: podcast destinations such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Speaker 1: We'd love it if you took the time to rate
Speaker 1: and review the show so more listeners can find us.
Speaker 1: You can also check us out on Twitter, follow me
Speaker 1: at scott Landman. Our guest, Rebecca Greenfield is at r
Speaker 1: Z Greenfield. Benchmark is produced by topor Foreheads ahead of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Podcasts is Francesco Levie. Thanks for listening, See you
Speaker 1: next time. Sunder Ba can hander for