Carrie Gracie, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s China editor who resigned to protest the network’s gender pay gap, said Monday that she was offered a pay raise before she quit, according to the New York Times. She said the raise, which put her compensation in line with one of her male counterparts, did nothing to address the systemic nature of the BBC’s pay-gap problem.
“I was not interested in more money,” Gracie, a 30-year veteran of BBC, told the Times. “I was interested in equality, and I kept saying to my managers that I didn’t need more money, I just needed to be made equal and that can be done in a variety of ways.” The offer would have raised her pay from 135,000 pounds to 180,000 pounds. According to the BBC’s data, the network’s two male international editors earned between 150,000 and 199,999 pounds, and 200,000 to 299,999 pounds.
Gracie’s resignation comes after months of controversy over gender discrimination at the BBC and other media companies. In October, the BBC published a report that found that female employees are paid, on average, 9 percent less than male employees. Yet the report found “no systemic gender discrimination” in pay.
The gender pay gap in the United Kingdom in general is 18.1 percent.
