The Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow has taken a voluntary 25% cut to his salary in an attempt to close the gender pay gap at the broadcaster.
Snow said he had made the decision after large companies – including Channel 4 and ITN, which produces Channel 4 News – were forced by the government to publish the average amount they pay women and men.
Snow told the Daily Mail he had taken a “gender pay cut”. He added: “I did it as a cooperative gesture. I took the cut over two months ago – 25%. Alas, contractually, I am not able to disclose my salary then or now.”
This year Channel 4 revealed that female employees on average earned almost 30% less than men at the broadcaster. The pay gap for ITN, the separate company that produces news programmes for ITV, Channel 5 and others, was 19.6%. This compares with a 10.7% difference at the BBC.
A Channel 4 News source said that Snow, as one of the station’s most recognisable faces, was employed directly by Channel 4 rather than ITN, meaning his pay cut will reduce the gender pay gap at the broadcaster rather than at the news production company.
They also claimed Snow’s salary before the pay cut was substantially lower than the £1m a year claimed in reports.
This year Channel 4’s new chief executive Alex Mahon said she would act to reduce the gender pay gap at the organisation: “There is no quick fix, but identifying the complex and multiple reasons behind our gap is the first step towards tackling the fundamental issues at play.”
“We must reduce the gap by focusing on increasing the proportion of women in higher-paid roles,” she said.
Quick GuideWhat is the gender pay gap, and what must UK companies report?
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What is the gender pay gap?
The gender pay gap is the difference between the average hourly earnings of men and women. The figure is expressed as a proportion of men’s earnings. According to the ONS, the gap between what UK male and female workers earn – based on median hourly earnings for all workers – was 17.9% in April 2018, down from 18.4% in April 2017. Data in 2018 showed that men were paid more than women in 7,795 out of 10,016 companies and public bodies in Britain.
What is being published?
All companies and some public sector bodies in Great Britain, except Northern Ireland, with more than 250 employees had to report their gender pay gap to the Government Equalities Office for the first time by by 4 April 2018. The second year of gender pay gap reports - and the first indicator of how public bodies and companies are performing - must be filed by April 2019
What’s the difference between the mean and the median figures?
Commonly known as the average, the mean is calculated by adding up the wages of all employees and dividing that figure by the number of employees. The mean gender pay gap is the difference between mean male pay and mean female pay.
The median gap is the difference between the employee in the middle of the range of male wages and the employee in the middle of the range of female wages. Typically the median is the more representative figure, because the mean can be skewed by a handful of highly paid employees.
What will happen if companies don’t report?
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said that, while it would approach employers informally at first if they failed to publish figures by the deadline, businesses could ultimately face “unlimited fines and convictions”. However, information published following a freedom of information request by the Guardian showed that no companies have been fined to date despite hundreds failing to accurately file their gender pay gap figures on time.
Gender pay gaps in the media industry have become a major issue since last summer’s publication of the salaries of BBC stars. The move revealed substantial discrepancies between some male and female presenters working on the same programmes. This was compounded by the resignation of the BBC China editor, Carrie Gracie, in protest at being paid less than her male counterparts.
Government legislation then forced other media companies to reveal their pay differential, with the Guardian’s parent company revealing a 11.3% pay gap. This compares with 15.2% at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, 19.6% at the publisher of the Daily Mail, and 35% at the Daily Telegraph.
