Six leading BBC hosts have agreed to take a pay cut after the news of a pay gap between men and women within the company was made public, according to BBC.
Huw Edwards, Nicky Campbell, John Humphrys, Jon Sopel, Nick Robinson and Jeremy Vine will all be accepting lesser pay. This decision follows the news that Carrie Gracie resigned from her position as BBC China editor for receiving pay unequal to her male counterparts. This issue even prompted UK's Culture Secretary Matt Hancock to comment. "As a treasured national institution, the BBC must not only uphold but be a beacon for the British values of fairness that this nation holds dear and this includes fair pay and equal pay for jobs," Hancock said.
While the exact pay cut has not been made clear, Humphrys told BBC that he would be earning "a lot less than £600,000 (app. $850,200)," which was his previous salary. According to a statement made by BBC, there will be further conversations regarding more equal pay with other employees in the future as well. "The final details of some of these changes are still being discussed, and there are further conversations that the BBC will have with others in due course."
Vine, another one of the six hosts taking a pay cut, further explained his decision with reporters on Friday. "I think it needs to be sorted out and I support my female colleagues who have rightly said they should be paid the same when they're doing the same job."
A list published this past summer of BBC's top earning hosts gave further proof into how drastic the gap was. The highest paid male was making £2.2 million (app. $3.1 million) and the highest earning female was only making between £450,000 and £500,000 (app. $637,700 and $708,500).
Director-General of the BBC Tony Hall pledged that the pay gap within the company will be closed by 2020 saying that BBC should be "an exemplar of what can be achieved when it comes to pay, fairness, gender and representation."
This is not the only instance of a publicized disparity in pay between genders in recent months. In Dec. 2017, Catt Sadler left her hosting gig with E! News after finding out her male co-host Jason Kennedy was getting paid almost double her salary. There was also controversy surrounding news that Mark Wahlberg got paid over 1000 times more than Michelle Williams for their reshoots of All the Money in the World.
