WEBVTT - BONUS: The Pay Check, Episode 4 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:11.040 M Carrie Gracie was a top editor at the BBC. 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:14.360 She worked there for thirty years, and about five years 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.000 ago she moved to China for a prestigious job as 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:21.800 one of four international editors. Then last summer she found 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.680 out she made fifty percent less than the men doing 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:30.280 the same job. She resigned. I was for four years 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.720 leading our China coverage. That's carry testifying in front of 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.320 British Parliament a few months ago. There are significant risks 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:41.080 in our China coverage. I dealt with them. I did 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.160 a good job. Twice. I've been a World Television Society 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.120 normally for the BBC for specialist journalists of the year. 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.680 It's just and you know what, I get me emotional. 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.320 But what I really wants to say about this equal 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.160 pay problem at the BBC is what it forces the 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:04.560 BBC to do is to retrofit in defense, you know, defenses, 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:09.039 justifications of the indefensible. The BBC gets most of its 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:13.000 funding from the public. Its newest charter required the broadcaster 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:16.319 to reveal how much it pays its top talent. The 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.280 government thought that people should know where their money was going. 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:23.200 It turned out it was mostly going to men. The 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.280 BBC had a wide pay gap at its most senior levels. 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:30.600 The top man made over two million pounds, the highest 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:33.520 paid woman just a quarter of that. You have an 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.800 equal pay problem, but you can't admit it because you 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:41.480 don't want to confront what maybe fiscal liabilities, which we 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:45.080 all agree are there. The BBC's pay scandal and Carries 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:49.000 public statements caused a big headache for the company. The 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:52.840 broadcaster has faced almost two hundred equal pay complaints and 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:57.280 a flood of negative press. The BBC told Bloomberg in 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.600 a statement, we are committed to making the BBC the 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.200 best place for women to work, and have said we 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:05.520 want to close the gender pay gap and have women 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:09.520 in half of leadership and on air rolls by When 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.240 individual issues over pay have been raised, we have sought 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:16.400 to resolve them as quickly as possible, but Carry wants 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.680 more from the BBC. My problem will be resolved by 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.880 an acknowledgement that my work was of equal value to 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:27.200 the men who I served alongside as an international editor. 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:31.480 Carrie's story doesn't sound that different than the ones we've 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.480 been telling you about in the US, but there is 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.680 one big difference between here and there. The British government 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.920 isn't just requiring the BBC to fest up about pay, 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:45.040 it's requiring all of its biggest businesses to report their 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.760 gender pay gaps. Companies don't have to get as specific 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:52.120 as the BBC did. Remember, the BBC is funded by 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.440 British taxpayers, so that's why it had to disclose. But 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:57.920 as part of a new law that went into effect 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.080 this year, all large companies in the UK have to 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:04.079 report to the government what they pay men versus women. 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.560 And Carrie's story was kind of a prelude to the 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:16.040 reckoning the entire country is going through now. When you 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.320 look at the world, you know what the population like, 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:22.239 Where is our place like? Where is our value? Where 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.040 going to deserve people for equal work? The gender alive 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:29.480 stops to keep women not on a pedistal but in 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:33.120 case you don't feel it, But when you see the numbers, 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:37.920 it's shocking. Get a power equalization between the sexiest women. 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:42.680 What do they want? We want to end gender inequality 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:48.040 and to do this we need everyone involved. Without women's work, 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.120 the wheel of the country they did not turn. You 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.480 always ask who's the best person, and it forms a 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:57.760 white bloke that's got to pay something wrong. And here 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:05.800 are the all male nominees. Welcome back to the paycheck. 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:10.560 I'm Rebecca Greenfield. The pay gap isn't just a phenomenon 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.720 in the US. Globally, women make about half of what 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.799 men do, and that's average earnings. According to the World 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:21.920 Economic Forum, the UK looks a lot like the US. 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:25.200 There are some equal pay laws on the books, but 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.800 on average women make a little under twenty less than men. 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:32.920 But unlike the US, the UK is trying to fix 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:36.240 things on a national scale. The country is in the 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.640 middle of a big nationwide experiment. As of April this year, 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.240 every large company in the UK had to publicly report 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:48.200 its gender pay gap. That is, the raw, unadjusted difference 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.080 between what all the men and all the women make 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:55.400 in a given company. It's a shaming initiative. Companies who 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.280 have particularly big gaps, and a lot of them do, 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:03.520 will be theoretically incentivized to close them. So far, over 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:07.080 ten thou companies have reported, and what they've reported in 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.120 most cases is that men are making more than women. 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.599 Goldman Sachs remember the company from episode one that's fighting 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.799 a class action gender discrimination suit here in the US. 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.640 It's female UK employees make less than half of what 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.280 the men do. Over at Bloomberg dot com, there's a 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.640 graphic that compiled all the company pay gaps, including ours. 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.400 These numbers aren't broken down by job title or level 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:35.920 of experience, so they don't tell us anything about what 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:38.840 men and women are being paid for the same jobs. 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:42.440 What these numbers show is that at most companies, women 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:46.040 hold very few of the highest paid positions. The question 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:50.640 is what happens next. Susie Ring, a reporter in Bloomberg's 0:05:50.680 --> 0:06:02.680 London bureau, reports, now that gender pay reporting is the 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:07.200 law in England, every single UK company with two fifty 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.320 employees or more has had to report their gender pay gap. 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:14.159 They had a deadline of a to do it, and 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.239 the figure they were asked for was simple, no fancy 0:06:17.279 --> 0:06:21.080 math needed, just what an average do the men make 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:24.240 at your company versus what the women make. If the 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.080 men make a lot more, it likely means yours as 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:29.520 a company where men are mostly at the senior levels 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:31.920 with the best paid jobs, and women have a lot 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.960 of the more junior roles. I can remember it being 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:42.960 very male top heavy, so I remember attending events and 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:45.720 the men at the front were exactly that. There are 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:51.799 men um and I remember looking at those people and thinking, 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.000 will I ever be standing on that stage with those men? 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.680 Or actually is it? Is it a man's job? Is 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:04.159 it the league manstrow white meal jaw? Actually? This is 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.880 Sarah Farquaharsen. She's thirty two and has been working in 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:11.960 customer service since she was seventeen. She says that through 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.200 her years in the industry, she's noticed something about her colleagues. 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:18.920 They're mostly women, and the people in the most senior 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:25.840 ranks mostly men. Sarah now works for Virgin Money, the 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:30.480 financial services business of Richard Branson's sprawling Virgin Empire. She 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:33.239 works at the company's customer service center in the northern 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.760 English city of Newcastle. It's her job to check on 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.280 how well other customer service agents are answering customer complaints. 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:43.800 She's also paid less than most people at her company. 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.640 Customer service workers are among the lowest paid groups at 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.960 Virgin Money, and most of the customer service workers are women. 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:54.960 That's why, even though Virgin Money has a female CEO 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.360 and it openly celebrated this new gender pay reporting law 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:01.320 and wants to be at the fourth of women's equality, 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:05.000 the company ended out reporting a thirty two gender pay gap. 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.240 Here's their CEO, Jane A. Gardia. The reason that we 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:12.280 report gender pay gap for thirty two is that although 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:16.119 I'm you know, we have a female chair, female CEO, 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.520 and we've got female representation on our EXCO at our 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:25.040 next senior levels of management, we are about male and 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:31.200 our customer services brilliant staff are predominantly female. And so 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.080 when you add up everybody's salaries and divide the male 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:35.959 and the female salary, then you get the thirty two 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.559 percent pay gap. And that's why I still think numbers 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.120 are important, because our objective is to get to fifty 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.960 fifty throughout the organization, and that means recruiting more brilliant 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:50.200 men to be fabulous customer service agents and recruiting more 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:54.440 brilliant women to be you know, in all layers, if 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:56.840 you like, of the hierarchy of management, and at that 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:01.280 point our gender pay gap will be equal. When I say, 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:03.320 Virgin Money wanted to be out front in the fight 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:07.480 for women, here's an example. They reported gender pay figures 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:10.720 a year before they legally had to revealing their pay 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.720 gap for twenty sixteen. Back then the number was even 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:19.920 bigger thirty six. So here was Virgin Money trying to 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:22.440 do the right thing and be transparent about their numbers 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.280 before they technically had to, and their numbers have not 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:28.280 been making them look good, and women weren't moving up 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.680 into the higher ranks from customer service rolls. The customer 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.120 service segment accounted for about half its gender pay gap. 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.760 Here's why Sarah, the customer service worker at Virgin Money, 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:44.440 thinks things ended up that way. I think customer services 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:49.800 has has historically been a female thing. Um, so you've 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:54.840 probably got the forty fifty years worth of female experience 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:57.640 in that area. We work all sorts of shift patterns 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:02.680 of virgin and and and I mean that might lend 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.199 it that actually might lend itself to women more because 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.439 historically and we have got a we culturally have more 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:12.920 of an issue where there is still a view that 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.679 the woman is the caregiver. And so if if a 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.040 man returns to a full time and a woman needs 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:20.760 to fit to it, I was around that she will 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:25.360 go for a business who offers flexible working. Jana and 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:28.839 Guardia says getting their gender pay gap from thirty down 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:32.719 to is a start, but she acknowledges they've got a 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.520 lot of work to do. Remember, going to a number 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:39.840 of organizations and broadly forty year old white men saying 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:41.120 to me, when you're trying to take my job and 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.880 my son's job away from me. And the point is 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:47.000 that we have to give ourselves time to my progress 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.520 because we're not in the business of firing men. It's 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:54.000 about making sure that every time there's a new job advertised, 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:56.959 we've got diverse job lists to choose from. It's about 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.760 making sure that in the organization people are understand that 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:05.720 um everybody is filled with unconscious bias. Virgin Money is 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:08.600 working on changes that will get more men into customer 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:13.040 service jobs and more women into executive positions. The bank 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:15.839 offers flexible hours across the company and looks at job 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.160 applications blind to try and reduce the chances of gender bias. 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.520 But a big part of their work, maybe even bigger 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:25.560 than getting more women into executive roles, is going to 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:28.600 be getting more men into customer service jobs. And I 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.040 think that's really important because it means that you have 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:35.320 to change some attitudes of men. You know, sometimes men 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:37.960 think I don't want to go into a customer services job, 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:39.839 you know, I want to go into a different role. 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:43.280 But actually that's the way I think that in financial 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:48.160 services organizations, men and women can make a lifetime career 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:50.240 that's going to be successful. It's going to be full 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:52.120 of integrity, and it's going to mean that they can 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:56.680 grow to be whatever they want in in the businesses 0:11:56.679 --> 0:12:04.520 of the future. What Virgin Money is going through this 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.080 very public realization that they've put more men at the 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:10.319 top and more women at the bottom of their company. 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:13.600 That's happening to a lot of companies in the UK 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.880 forced to open up their pay gap numbers. Thousands of 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.600 businesses are facing an uncomfortable truth and they have to 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.440 figure out how to explain these numbers to the whole country. 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.320 Some companies tried to massage the data to make their 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:33.319 numbers look a little bit better. Earlier this year, it 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.319 came out that some accountancy firms and law firms didn't 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:39.240 include partners in the numbers the highest paid tears in 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:43.560 their firms. What they were doing was legal. The government 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:46.200 had said it was okay to report this way, but 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:48.920 when people found out businesses were leaving partners out of 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:52.200 the equation, their outrage forced a number of companies to 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:56.440 restate their figures. Then there are the companies that didn't 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:58.840 report in time for the deadline, even though they had 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:04.280 to buy law. About fifteen hundred businesses missed the April cutoff. 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:08.240 In theory, a company can face an unlimited fine for 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.520 not reporting, but we don't yet know how easy this 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.160 will be to enforce and how much companies who don't 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:18.600 comply will really have to cough up. But for most companies, 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:21.240 what the reporting did was to force them to look 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.720 closely at how their businesses were structured and why women 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:27.280 often seemed to drift to the bottom of that structure. 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:31.839 I mean, one classic thing was Ryanair, where there's a 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:35.480 pay gap and they were saying, well, it's obvious we've 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.240 got seventy percent pay gap because all the men of 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.679 pilots and all the women are serving the drinks. But 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:45.400 they've got a global pilot shortage. Why don't they train 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.320 some more women as pilots. That was Harriet Harman. She's 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:52.360 a British politician and she's also the reason this big 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:56.520 new law exists. Ryanair, the company she was just talking about, 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:59.480 says that they've seen an increase in applications from female 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:03.280 pilots and are quote committed to developing this welcome trend. 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.560 Harriet is not surprised by the big gaps and companies 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:10.320 are reporting. Her third or six year long political career 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:12.720 has been a lesson in how the different roles are 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:17.120 for men and women in every industry, including government. When 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:21.000 she was elected as a Member of Parliament in only 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:25.600 three percent of British politicians were women. It seemed like 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.080 women were blocked from lots of areas of British politics. 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:32.240 Harriet was like a one woman wrecking crew, breaking through 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:35.520 those blockades one by one. She was the first UK 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:39.800 female Solicitor General for American listeners, that's basically the equivalent 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:43.080 of the Deputy Attorney General, and also the first Minister 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.760 for women, a role that had never existed before her. 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.160 It was her job to make policy about issues like 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.200 women's rights. One of her crusades has been gender paid transparency. 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:56.720 But to a lot of politicians, this idea of forcing 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:59.840 companies to state their pay gaps, it was just too radical. 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:04.280 I was a bit on my own arguing for transparency 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:06.600 for pay transparency, but I felt it would put the 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.240 power in women's hands if they could actually see what 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.880 was going on, if the veil of discrimination was torn off, 0:15:13.480 --> 0:15:16.360 because what had been happening for years is the National 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:20.800 Statistical Office would be reporting the overall figure of the 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:25.160 pay gap, and every organization they'd go, oh, tucked up, 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:28.120 isn't that awful a pay gap? We're so against? That 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.360 must be happening somewhere else. We'd never have it here. 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.720 But of course it always was happening here. Harriet realized 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:39.400 that without widespread support, the only way she'd ever get 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:42.320 the law through was to go step by tiny step. 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:47.720 The first step was to introduce an imperfect solution, make 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:51.800 the program voluntary. Companies could make their pay figures public 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:56.000 if they chose. Even getting government to do that, create 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:58.240 a system for companies to report their pay gap if 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:01.840 they wanted to was controversy. Show we had such a 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.080 fight down to the wire. It was the very last 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.640 piece of legislation that got through before the general election, 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:11.160 which we then lost. But I didn't manage to get 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.160 the bill through until the literally the last day. In 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.680 two thousand and ten. Companies did not jump to publish 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:22.400 their pay figures because the reporting was voluntary. Every business 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:24.760 worried about sticking their neck out if they didn't have to. 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:29.600 So by Tift, five years after the voluntary solution was 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:33.640 put into place, only five companies in the whole country 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:38.920 had reported their numbers. Clearly, making reporting optional wasn't working, 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:45.080 but politicians couldn't agree on making reporting mandatory either. Vince Cable, 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.480 seventy five year of British political icon and leader of 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.760 the Liberal Democrats party, was Business Secretary by this time. 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:56.600 He says his political opponents were really resistant to forcing 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:00.320 companies to report. Here he is describing how they put it. 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:03.560 The argument feels as well, what is it going to 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.400 tell us because men and women are doing different geomaty 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:12.199 is measuring like for like. But of course, as we know, 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.359 that raises the basic question about why are there and 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:19.840 women doing different roles. In the end, it wasn't even 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:23.960 Harriet or Harriet's party who made the reporting mandatory. A 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.960 coalition government had taken power after Harriet's party Labor, was 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:31.760 voted out, and basically what happened was that the left 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:34.560 wing party of that coalition pressured the right wing to 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.200 make a campaign promise when it was trying to get reelected. 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:41.040 When they were reelected, it was the right wing Conservative 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:43.480 party who had to make good on their promise and 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.320 ended up forcing companies to reveal their gender pay gaps, 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:51.000 and that's where the UK is now. It took years 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.200 for a mostly male government to decide that companies should 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:56.520 even be asked to state what men and women make, 0:17:57.440 --> 0:17:59.800 and even now that the numbers are out, there was 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.679 still seeing companies try to make their numbers better without 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:06.639 paying women more, or failed to report or not adequately 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:08.920 explain why women end up in the low paid jobs 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.280 and men in the high paid ones. Given how long 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:14.639 it's taken us to get to this point, I asked 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:16.879 Harriet how long she thinks it should take the country 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:19.760 to close its gender pay gap. These are things that 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:23.680 management can change if they want to, And therefore I 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:28.240 think that women have waited long enough and endured unequal 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:32.280 pay long enough. If you try and add together all 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.600 the costs that women have borne by an equal pay, 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:39.640 it is untold billions. So I would say sooner rather 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.240 than later, I think women have fed up with waiting 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:52.520 for equality. We don't know yet how much there will 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:55.680 affect the pay gap in the UK. Its main purpose 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:59.159 is to diagnose the problem. It's up to companies to 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:02.000 look at their number and decide what, if anything, they're 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.600 going to do. But in another European country, there's a 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.760 new law that's getting a lot of attention. It compels 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.520 companies to do something about the pay gap. Iceland, like 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:15.439 the US and the UK, passed equal pay and anti 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:20.280 discrimination laws decades ago. The anti discrimination law has been 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:24.320 strengthened four times since nineteen seventy six, and the country 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.400 has also passed laws requiring an equal number of men 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.199 and women on company boards. But despite all of this, 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.919 Iceland still has a pay gap of about sixteen percent, 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.440 so this year it doubled down. While the UK has 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:42.399 been looking at the average pay difference between men and women, 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:45.560 Iceland has passed a new law focused on men and 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:52.040 women who hold the same job. Claire Setteth reports starting 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.359 this year, companies with more than twenty five employees have 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.720 to submit to the government official salaries for every job 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.480 and and if one employee is making more than another 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.720 who's doing his or her exact same job, a company 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:11.040 has to justify that discrepancy in writing. My name is Rosa, 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.280 maybe because of those long surnames mean we use giving 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:20.040 names in Iceland, so you can call me Rosa. But 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:24.959 I'm the head of the Equality Unit at the Ministry 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:29.159 of Welfare and in Iceland. Rosa is in charge of 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:33.119 this big new salary law and the experiment the country 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:35.640 ran to see if it would even work. In two 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:38.840 thousand eight, Iceland launched a pilot version of the law 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:43.080 with real businesses to see what worked and what didn't. 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.719 One of the businesses that participated was Iceland's Customs office, 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:51.000 where men tended to be in field jobs and women 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:55.280 worked in the office. Those field jobs they paid better, 0:20:56.119 --> 0:21:01.400 so custom officers working out in the field, for example, 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:09.160 are of the cases made. And they had had the 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:15.360 unwritten rule that those men could return to the headquarters 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.840 when they were close to their retirement aids and just 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:24.280 do ordinary office work. But then they were sitting and 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:30.840 sharing offices with women that were working as secretaries and 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:35.880 the equal past and that is based on the rule 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:42.720 of paying equally for jobs of equal value. So employers 0:21:42.760 --> 0:21:45.160 needs to ask those questions, what are we paying for? 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.080 You know, what value has this job for the company? 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:52.080 Here were men working alongside women doing the same jobs, 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:56.120 and because of their field job salary histories, the men 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.800 were getting paid more under this new law. The customs 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:02.600 are has had to explain that to the government, and 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:05.440 Iceland decided that If the only reason you're paying one 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.040 employee more than another is that he's an older man 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:12.159 close to retirement, well that's not a good enough reason. 0:22:12.800 --> 0:22:16.080 The Customs Office volunteered to be part of this experiment, 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:20.359 they didn't necessarily think they'd find much of a paid discrepancy. 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:22.960 Rosa says that a lot of companies were in this boat. 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:28.760 But many employers set that at the beginning, we are 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:33.840 not discriminating in our company. But in many cases they 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:38.439 found out that their workplaces were just astenti biased as 0:22:38.720 --> 0:22:44.600 any other, and that there were in some cases discriminating 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:49.840 against individuals. I didn't know, and I don't think that 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:53.680 people decide that they are going to discriminate against people, 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:57.400 or that they're going to pay this guy or this 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:04.720 woman more or less than the colleagues. It's something that happens. 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:08.480 When companies discover a pay gap like this, they're required 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:12.040 to fix it. They can give people raises or even 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:15.280 make pay cuts, but essentially they have to bring people 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:18.720 in line with the stated salary for their job. To 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:22.120 be clear, this new law is just one small part 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:26.320 of Iceland's pay gap strategy. In fact, Rosa isn't really 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.199 sure why Iceland's getting so much pressed for it. We 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:32.960 are getting a lot of attention for the work we 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:36.520 are doing. It's it's unbelievable, you know, because I've been 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.439 around since in this field, since twenty years or for 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:43.679 twenty years, and I mean, we have never had this 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:50.280 attention for the policy field. Here's something incredible about Iceland 0:23:50.760 --> 0:23:55.000 in any given year between forty and Parliament is women. 0:23:55.640 --> 0:23:58.119 The reason Iceland has been able to tackle this issue 0:23:58.359 --> 0:24:00.320 is that women have enough power to be able to 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:03.480 make the changes they want. In fact, this whole focus 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:08.680 on workplace equality got started because in whopping of the 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:12.280 country's women went on strike from their jobs, from child 0:24:12.359 --> 0:24:25.720 care and chores at home to protest their mistreatment. In 0:24:26.640 --> 0:24:28.960 Iceland was the first country in the whole world to 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:32.840 democratically elect a woman as head of state. All those 0:24:32.880 --> 0:24:36.439 women have helped get these laws passed. Even with all 0:24:36.480 --> 0:24:40.800 these changes, closing Iceland's gap is taking an awfully long time. 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:45.720 They still have that six percent pay gap, and once 0:24:45.760 --> 0:24:48.040 you account for the differences in the types of jobs 0:24:48.040 --> 0:24:51.600 men and women hold or hours worked, six percent of 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:55.800 that gap still persists. A decade ago, it was eight 0:24:57.240 --> 0:25:00.320 but at this rate it's going to take another thirty 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:04.919 years to get it down to zero. Politicians have learned 0:25:04.960 --> 0:25:09.120 from experience that genter equality doesn't come about on its 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:14.400 owner court. They need to push things and um. They've 0:25:14.440 --> 0:25:18.200 also learned that if they will wait on the normal 0:25:18.280 --> 0:25:23.199 poses legislative chances, they can wait forever. The fact that 0:25:23.280 --> 0:25:26.199 even in Iceland, where so many laws are already on 0:25:26.240 --> 0:25:28.760 the books to narrow the pay gap, where so many 0:25:28.800 --> 0:25:32.560 women are making the laws, there's still a sixteen percent gap. 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:34.960