Diary
15/11/2018
Today I opened up all of the survey results in a spreadsheet and went through and analyzed the results. It took me quite a while as I had over 170 responses and therefore needed to make sure the results that I talked about were representative of all of the results. I used the premade Google Forms graphs for the quantitative answers and listed the main points from the qualitative questions. Now I need to analyze three clips from Edgar Wright movies to talk about in my video essay.
Inform our own idea...
The people who watch all of these shows I have looked at are all different age groups. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is one of the shows with the broadest range of people watching, the reason this show is like this because of Ant & Dec and also the show has a big range of content.
The findings suggest that if we go with the Saturday evening, ITV, 7 pm as this is one of the most popular times for viewing TV as a family. At this time people will put the TV on and just watch whatever show is on. For the group, this shows us that we need to make sure that our show doesn't collide with a popular show as everyone would just watch the show. If we did have to show our show at the same time as a popular show we would have to make sure we were appealing to a different target audience.
Based on our idea we now need to research our target audience to find out what they would want from a show, we need to think of ways we can make our show different from others. We need to research what the shows we want to borrow ideas from do and how they are really successful. ​
Unit 12: Specialist Study
Inital Research
Debate ideas surrounding TV...
How children are affected by TV
Is the watershed a good enough method of ratings
Do the BBC only cover certain stories
Are the news outlets responsible for the public having concerns with politics
Is the TV responsible for obesity?
Gender Pay Gap in TV?
Does TV stifle creativity?
Why does the daily mail write fake articles?
Do the BBC portray an opinion in their shows?
Does this morning hinder peoples their lives?
Does ITV make people live a different life to stay in and watch the morning TV?​
Gender Pay Gap in TV?
This would be a very good choice of a debate to look at as each TV broadcasting channel has over 250 employees so legally they have to publically announce their gender pay gap which would mean the information would be very easily accessible. Selecting this would be interesting as I have an interest in this and feel like I would be able to do lots of research.
How does TV affect Children?
This would be a good choice because this is a pressing issue in today's society. These days children are growing up with access to the digital world and parents have no idea of the problems this may cause. I was always told never to sit by the TV otherwise I would get square eyes - these days children have their own iPad at the age of three. This does always mean children are then exposed to so much online.
Bibliography
Final Idea
The issue I have selected is the Gender pay gap in TV. This will detail how broadcasters pay the stars and crew different amounts. The government requires each organization of over 250 employees to show a percentage difference between the mean pay of all the men and the mean pay of all the women. This is not enough as it doesn't show the difference in pay for say two people doing the same job. I decided on this idea because I feel like we are stepping in the right direction but I feel more could be done to dissolve this problem. I know very little about this topic just that generally men have higher positions and that male stars are usually paid more. To begin my research I need to look at the BBC and ITV gender pay gap documents. I need to check their highest paid stars to see how many are male and how many are female. I then want to look at the executives of both companies to see how many are male and female. I then want to have a look and find out as much as possible about pay at different job roles of if they have a statement about this. The media product I am planning to make will be a video essay on this topic and it will look at what else each company can do to decrease the gender pay gap and the outcomes that people would like to see.
Diary
07/01/2019
Today we came in and received the brief for this new work project. I am excited about this project I think it will be good to be able to find an argument to talk about. I will probably make a video essay as I feel this is one of the best ways of getting across information like this. We began by listing several arguments which we could talk about than bringing that down to two. After this, we then researched the two arguments a bit more then I picked one argument. The argument I decided on was the gender pay gap in TV. I decided this because I felt that it was a good topic and everyone would have an opinion on the subject.
The Guardian
To begin my research I have started looking at an article online from The Guardian. The article is titled "What’s to blame for the gender pay gap? The housework myth." Their article begins by discussing the history of the issue; "In the Bible, the Lord tells Moses to place the value of female servants at three-fifths that of male servants. Papyrus from Roman Egypt reveals both a gender-specific division of labor and much lower rates of pay for women’s work." As you can see the Gender Pay Gap issue is a problem because society used to be built around the Father of the family going to work and the Mother looking after the children and looking after the house. They go on to say, "they take career breaks for family reasons; their work is low skilled; they work in the caring professions; they are
underrepresented in science and engineering" they sum this up by just saying these are excuses.
"the perception that women’s work was less valuable than men’s was carried forward into this new world"
Their conclusion is very blurred they just draw the facts to a close not really offering an opinion. Makes me wonder what The Guardians gender pay gap is. A quick google shows that on average women who work for GUARDIAN NEWS & MEDIA LIMITED earn 88p for every £1 that men earn. This is a gender pay gap of 11.7%. After seeing these results I decided I should look in to other companies to see what their gender pay gap is.
Other Organisations
I started looking at other organizations I went through every single company I could think of and was so surprised to see that in 99.9% of cases Women are paid less than Men. It was so difficult to find a company which paid the women more. I found a couple; Kwikfit; women are paid £1.04 for every pound that men earn, Vauxhall women earn £1.01 for every pound that men earn and the other I found was Really Useful Products limited where women get paid £1.07 for every pound that men earn.
Interestingly at The Body Shop, the women earn 49p for every a pound a man would earn. To this they didn't really have a comment they just published the results and said they employ more women than men.
Diary
08/01/2019
I began my research today by looking at an article on The Guardian. After looking at their article I was surprised to see their gender pay gap so decided to look into others. The worst that I found was the Body Shop who pay women half of what men earn. The way the gender pay gap results are calculated is the average pay of both men and women so as they employ a lot of women, women then get paid less. The same way Vauxhall and KwikFit both pay women more than men but this is because they have a lot more male employees. Next I will look at the pay gap results for the broadcasters.
Broadcasters
BBC
2017 10.7% lower; Women earn 89p for every £1 a man earns
2018 8.4% lower; Women earn 92p for every £1 a man earns
​
ITV
2017 9.5% lower; Women earn 90p for every £1 a man earns
2018 no data yet
​
Channel 4
2017 28.6% lower; Women earn 71p for every £1 a man earns
2018 22.6% lower; Women earn 77p for every £1 a man earns
​
Channel 5
2017 2.9% HIGHER; Women earn £1.03 for every £1 a man earns
2018 no data yet
​
SKY
2017 5.2% lower; Women earn 95p for every £1 a man earns
2018 no data yet
​
Virgin Media
2017 9% lower; Women earn 91p for every £1 a man earns
2018 10% lower; Women earn 90p for every £1 a man earns
You can see from this data that 5/6 broadcasters pay women less than men. In most places where a 2018 result exists, it is better than the 2017 result; apart from Virgin Media where the 2018 result is worse, only marginally - surely they could have made it marginally better. ​
Excuse Documents
So each company that has posted their gender pay gap data also releases a pdf document which outlines their "amazing excuses". These documents are publically available. Let's have a dive into some of the articles.
First up is the BBC. Its interesting as a news outlet they post an article about their gender pay gap which details all the information as any other news outlet would. They say "When the star salaries were published in July, it was revealed that 35% of those earning more than £150,000 a year were women." This has been twisted to make it seem more positive. Another news outlet would have said 65% of men are paid more than women which makes the statement seem a lot more negative. They go on to say " The report finds that the gap is much less than the national average but that should not obscure the fact that inequality is a factor for some staff day in and day out." This is their "redeeming statement" or that's what they would call it. Saying they are better than the average of all companies but they do realize they need to solve the problem. At least BBC has admitted that they are in the wrong "There were also a number of "failings" in procedures that need to be improved, the audit found." So the companies do know that they have an issue.
Diary
10/01/2019
Today, I went on the Government gender pay gap website (Click Here) to have a look at what the pay gap for each of the broadcaster's results was like. Unsurprisingly, only 1 of the 6 broadcasters paid females more than males. After this I looked at excuse documents, this is my term for the press release that comes out with the results, surprisingly in Channel 5's press release, they don't say their job is done they say that they still have work to do even though women are paid more than men. Next, I want to analyze the data to see how many years at the current rate it would take for the gender pay gap to disappear.
UK Average
On the Government website, you can download a spreadsheet with all of the data which means you can manipulate it to work out more information on the data. I worked out the average for 2017 and 2018.
2017; Women are paid 14.3% less than Men
2018**; Women are paid 12.9% less than Men
This is a positive decrease of 1.4%
This means it will take 9 years until women are paid more than men or the same amount, this could be 2027. So some action needs to be taken before then. Especially if there is a decrease at such a small percent. Maybe the Government should make all companies have a Gender Pay Gap of less than 2.5% by a certain year.
**Baring in mind, not all of the results of 2018 are available yet.
Against Interview
To continue my research I thought it would be good to have an interview which is against the Gender Pay Gap. When I was talking about this with my family they suggested a family friend whom I could talk to about this. From his replies, his responses at the start seem somewhat valid. Chris Evans is on TV way more than Claudia Winkleman; so fair enough for that. In a normal job you are paid on experience so his comment is okay about Holly and Ant & Dec, but they do earn a lot more for doing a lot less. He goes on to say that he thinks the whole "Gender Pay Gap issue" has gone too far. He said "I think the government is giving in to the next wave of feminist movement," If organizations are paying based on experience then is there anyone in the wrong?. His point about a cleaner being paid as much as a CEO is a wrong understanding as it is an average and the idea is that women should have higher positions. Maybe people not having a good understanding is the issue itself. His point about the objective-seeming like women should be paid more; I somewhat agree with this too, that's why I suggested maybe there should be a 5% leeway. As this problem will never be solved but could be compromised. The comment about the person working the whole time someone is on maternity leave is true also. All the law says is if a lady goes on maternity leave when they come back the same job or equivalent must be available to them. His last comment I did think was very sexist and I can't agree with what he said there.
Diary
14/01/2019
Today, I downloaded a spreadsheet with all of the gender pay gap information to manipulate the information as best as possible for my research. The biggest thing I found is that at the current rate of decrease it would take just under 10 years for the pay gap to disappear. I then wrote up the interview that I had with the family friend who is against the gender pay gap. It was really interesting to talk to someone who is against something like this. As I have said above some of his opinions could be classed as valid but some were very sexist. Tomorrow I will write up the results from my survey.
Survey
When we began our research I created a survey which would target both females and males to see what their opinion on this would be. The results were actually very interesting. So 70% of the people who answered were female and 21% were male. I opened the data in a spreadsheet which means I can see the data relating to their gender.
No one who answered the survey was 60+. The majority were aged 20-35 and the second category was 13-20. I think this is mainly because the survey was posted online and this age group is more likely to use the internet. Also, because this is the new group of people, and these are the ones who want the world to be changed.
This was a very interesting question out of the people that said no, all but 1 male said no, whereas all the women said yes which was very surprising. I think this is down to lack of knowledge around what people know about the gender pay gap.
I wasn't surprised by the answers to this question. Only 4 people said no to this and this was from both genders so I have to say this was a lack of understanding based on the fact the answers don't match the above data. Maybe in the future, I should make my questions more clear.
I wasn't suprised at all with this question. The majority of people put society or something relating to society. A couple of the females put men being in charge, or older organizations being passed down from man to man in the family. I think this shows people aren't blaming the companies themselves.
This question was kind of strange as everything way people suggested for the Gender Pay Gap to be changed has sort of already been done. People said; paying everyone the same, well that's done for the lower and middle quartile of staff. Changes to the law, well the government have started to make laws and progress. The only thing suggested that could be changed would be absoloute transparency and this would involve posting the salaries and gender of each member of staff.
Nearly everyone said it wasn't acceptable but then also said the female talent is so much less on the BBC. For example, Chris Evans is on TV way more than Claudia Winkleman and has been doing it for way longer so sure he would be paid more. Again this is the majority of people agreeing that the BBC aren't in the wrong.
This was very split half of people said yes the pay rates should be posted and half said no. The reasons against were its a publically funded organization so the public have a right to know where the money is going. Some said the celebrities should have been asked permission. Again, I believe people don't really think that people think this is a problem and people just assume Celebrities are paid a lot of money.
This was very split half of people said they don't think it will go because women naturally will have children and want to look after them and in this time men will gain experience and therefore get higher positions. The other group of people said they think it will slowly go over a slow amount of time. A couple people said it will need laws and procedures in place. I think everyone's opinion here is true and valid.
People generally said this was a poor excuse. However, some said if its true then what can ITV say. I think this was ITV trying to cover their back but clearly, it didn't work. Maybe ITV should have done what everyone else did in their "excuse articles" and talk about how they are trying to solve the gender pay gap problem.
Conclusion
To conclude this research portfolio... I think what I learned on this part of the project was an eye-opener to what is actually happening. Doing the "against interview" was definitely the most insightful interview as it gave me a different perspective on the situation and it showed me that the "so-called feminists" are going for women to have better rights than men and that's not solving any situation. The survey was also very helpful as it showed me what the public really want; they don't care what the BBC stars get paid - they know the BBC are paying staff equally. They think the gender pay gap with dissolve with time, and the woman amongst the public surveyed agreed that organizations should be more transparent and give job vs job pay rates rather than company averages. To improve my survey I should have thought more about the questions to work out how they could be more useful. The slowest part of the research was calculating the percentage differences between individual companies and all the companies together, I feel like this was necessary as I need the facts to base my balanced argument.
Bibliography
Diary
15/01/2019
Today I did the write up for my survey. The reason I left this until the end was so that I could have them as many as possible responses. I had been looking at the at the responses on the days before this so I could begin thinking about what the information means. I was not really surprised with the results; they matched most of the things that I had read online. The issue with the survey was that people didn't really have enough background information to answer the questions, having this would have meant that people could have written more detailed answers. After this, I wrote the conclusion for the research side of this project.