List Five Controversial Opinions | Page 5 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

This isn’t just America, and it should be noted that America has some of the weakest laws on sex crimes among the leading democracies, in that many States include sex crimes among those crimes governed by the statute of limitations, meaning that someone like Bill Cosby cannot be charged with many of accusations against him.

The majority of countries do not put a time limit on sex crimes, especially those involving minors. It is sad that the US removes the chances of justice for so many, and doesn’t recognise how long it may take a victim of sexual abuse to face what has happened to them.

On the issue of equal pay for the same work, a situation has arisen in the UK on it with the decision of respected journalist Carrie Gracie to stand down from her role as the BBC’s China Editor, though she hasn’t quit the BBC which she has been with for 30 years.

In the open letter she released about her decision, she stated:

Mine is just one story of inequality among many, but I hope it will help you understand why I feel obliged to speak out.

I am a China specialist, fluent in Mandarin and with nearly three decades of reporting the story. Four years ago, the BBC urged me to take the newly created post of China editor.

I knew the job would demand sacrifices and resilience. I would have to work 5,000 miles from my teenage children, and in a heavily censored one-party state I would face surveillance, police harassment and official intimidation.

I accepted the challenges while stressing to my bosses that I must be paid equally with my male peers. Like many other BBC women, I had long suspected that I was routinely paid less, and at this point in my career, I was determined not to let it happen again. Believing that I had secured pay parity with men in equivalent roles, I set off for Beijing.

In the past four years, the BBC has had four international editors – two men and two women. The Equality Act 2010 states that men and women doing equal work must receive equal pay. But last July I learned that in the previous financial year, the two men earned at least 50% more than the two women.

Despite the BBC’s public insistence that my appointment demonstrated its commitment to gender equality, and despite my own insistence that equality was a condition of taking up the post, my managers had yet again judged that women’s work was worth much less than men’s.

My bewilderment turned to dismay when I heard the BBC complain of being forced to make these pay disclosures. Without them, I and many other BBC women would never have learned the truth.

I told my bosses the only acceptable resolution would be for all the international editors to be paid the same amount. The right amount would be for them to decide, and I made clear I wasn’t seeking a pay rise, just equal pay. Instead the BBC offered me a big pay rise which remained far short of equality. It said there were differences between roles which justified the pay gap, but it has refused to explain these differences. Since turning down an unequal pay rise, I have been subjected to a dismayingly incompetent and undermining grievance process which still has no outcome.

Enough is enough. The rise of China is one of the biggest stories of our time and one of the hardest to tell. I cannot do it justice while battling my bosses and a byzantine complaints process. Last week I left my role as China editor and will now return to my former post in the TV newsroom where I expect to be paid equally.

For BBC women this is not just a matter of one year’s salary or two. Taking into account disadvantageous contracts and pension entitlements, it is a gulf that will last a lifetime. Many of the women affected are not highly paid “stars” but hard-working producers on modest salaries. Often women from ethnic minorities suffer wider pay gaps than the rest.

This is not the gender pay gap that the BBC admits to. It is not men earning more because they do more of the jobs which pay better. It is men earning more in the same jobs or jobs of equal value. It is pay discrimination and it is illegal.

The BBC had four international editors – America (Jon Sopel), Middle East (Jeremy Bowen), Europe (Katya Adler) and China.

I would consider the most difficult of those briefs the Middle East and China because of the threat of violence and the repression of journalism in those areas. Yet the highest paid international editor, Jon Sopel, she discovered is on between £200-250,000 a year, while Jeremy Bowen is on between £150-199,000. This was revealed last year when the BBC had to, by pay bands, reveal those paid over £150,000 a year.

Ms. Gracie, being paid £135,000, did not make the list – despite the BBC having assured her about pay equality with her male colleagues in order to get her to accept the post.

And here is the real irony, returning to the newsroom has seen her receive an additional £10,000. Her pay is better as a newsroom journalist and presenter than it was as China editor.

An extremely talented journalist with a long association with China, a Mandarin speaker, and about the best-qualified BBC lifer to fulfil the role of China editor, feels the need to resign from her post because the BBC refused to pay her the same as her male colleagues for taking on an equivalent role.

The straight gender pay gap can often be misleading. For instance, an airline might have a gender pay gap because the majority of pilots (a high paid position) are male, while the majority of cabin crew (lower paid) are female. This case is not about the gender pay gap.

This is about equal pay, and too many organisations believe they can get away with ignoring the law.