viewpoint Steve Bird says that gender pay laws are a strong starting point


Stand up for the angry young women


F


emale journalists are on course to outnumber men in Britain’s newsrooms. According to a recent


report, two thirds of new journalists – those with two years’ experience or less – are women, and it may not be long before half of all journalists are female. At 45 per cent, the figure is high in comparison with other professions – 31 per cent of barristers are women. However, even though this is a shift in


historically male-dominated workplaces, men still predominate in senior roles and little has been done to narrow the pay gap between men and women. It won’t come as a shock to most NUJ members that, despite equal pay legislation, women working full-time earn nearly 14 per cent less than men on average. If you include part-time employees, this rises to a gap of more than 17 per cent. Media workers are no exception.


According to a study of UK journalists by the Reuters Institute, more than half of the women surveyed earned less than £2,400 a month compared with 35 per cent of men, with males being much more likely to earn over £40,000 (22 per cent of women and 36 per cent of men). When you add low starting salaries,


student debt and rising inflation to the possibility of unequal career prospects, it is little wonder that media companies are full of angry young women. Just as unions at Ford Dagenham


played a pivotal role in winning legislation on equal pay for women in 1970, NUJ chapels and members need to be active now to make sure that these journalists have a voice. And this applies equally to women who are overlooked later in their careers or whose pay falls behind because of a


break in employment to have children. Fortunately, the gender pay reporting


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Just as unions at Ford Dagenham played a pivotal role in winning legislation on equal pay for women, NUJ chapels and members need to be active now


legislation that came into force in April gives us a great opportunity to throw light on this inequality and discuss how to eradicate it. The new law requires employers with 250 or more staff to reveal the pay gap between male and female workers and publish this information online before April 2018 (and every year thereafter). This data will offer an insight into average pay gaps, numbers of men and women receiving bonuses, and the proportions of each in different pay bands. Disappointingly, of the 9,000 companies affected, so far only five have listed their figures on the government website, with many businesses looking set to avoid publicity by publishing data at the last minute along with hundreds of others. But businesses’


obligation to assess the data and, ultimately, to publish it gives an opportunity to shame those who are failing to cooperate or whose figures are poor, and to work constructively with employers who recognise the need to redress an imbalance. Practically, there are


many things we can do: • Those with pay


bargaining agreements need to make gender pay


central to talks every year; if necessary, use trade union laws to force disclosure.


• Push for deals that favour the lower paid, as this band tends to include disproportionately more women. • Ask for regular scrutiny of statistics and suggest targets for equal numbers of male and female staff in senior roles. • Propose a working party on how to


improve the position of women. • Discuss how support women taking


maternity leave and encourage them to return – these could include a salary includes any missed pay increases. • Discuss issues that affect female staff and raise these with managers. The gender pay law is far from perfect


– crucially, it has no sanctions – but it opens the door to a very important and long overdue discussion. Whether a workplace has union recognition or not, NUJ members should be intensifying the campaign to close the gender pay gap for good.


Steve Bird is FoC at the FT chapel and a member of the NUJ’s national executive council


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