The Guardian: Female BBC manager publicly declines promotion over pay inequality

By Jim Waterson

22 May 2019

A BBC manager has publicly turned down a promotion after finding out she had been offered £12,000 less than a man doing the same job, threatening legal action against the broadcaster and suggesting the corporation is still struggling with equal pay.

Karen Martin emailed hundreds of BBC staff to announce she would no longer be taking up her role as one of the two deputy editors in the BBC’s radio newsroom, which produces material for broadcast to hundreds of millions of people on both UK radio stations and the World Service.

The experienced radio producer’s new job, in which she would oversee global radio news output, had been announced in February. But Martin said she could not accept the role after discovering the other newly appointed deputy editor, Roger Sawyer, had been offered a substantially higher salary.

“Despite being awarded the same job, on the same day, after the same board, during the same recruitment process, BBC News asked me to accept a considerably lower salary than my male counterpart. A lot less,” she wrote in the email sent to all BBC radio newsroom staff.

“I’ve been assured our roles and responsibilities are the same. I’ve also been told my appointment was ‘very well deserved’. It’s just that I’m worth £12,000 less. Over the past four months I have asked BBC News to think again. And they’ve inched their offer up by addressing historical ‘under payments’. Now the gap is nearer to £7,000. But for me it has never been about the actual salary. It has been about equal pay.”

Read the full article in The Guardian.