The Gender Pay Gap - It’s Not Your Fault

This blog was originally published on Natalie’s website in Feb 2020. The pandemic, and everything that followed, disrupted our plans for this show. But when the time is right, we plan to finish what we started…

Two years ago, I started making a show with my best friend Natalie. This is a picture of us the day we decided we’d definitely do it. Look how happy we are! Well, it’s been two years, and we’re – at best – only halfway through the process. It takes a long time to get partners and support and funding to get a project like this off the ground. And the pace was made even slower by me having a baby, and Nat moving house, and both of us getting new jobs.

Sometimes, this idea has seemed impossible. Our first Arts Council funding application was knocked back, and so were another TEN applications for artist residencies/other funding (I hadn’t realised this number was so depressingly high until I counted up all the applications just now!). But, thanks to the support of Omnibus Theatre (where we tested our first ideas for the show, and who have been supportive ever since), and Battersea Arts Centre, and (second time lucky) Arts Council England – we’ve finally been able to spend two solid weeks researching and developing ideas for the show.

The show is about the Gender Economic Gap. It sounds quite official, doesn’t it, but we actually made up the term ‘Gender Economic Gap’, because there wasn’t an official label that summed up everything we wanted to include in the show. We wanted to talk about the gender pay gap (17.3%, in case you’re wondering[1]) – but we also wanted to talk about the gender pensions gap[2] and the pink tax[3] and maternity discrimination[4]and, and, and… the list goes on.

The gender economic gap is complicated and nuanced. Women earn less, and save less, and invest less, and often spend more – on everything from childcare to moisturiser. During the research process we found out lots of things that weren’t surprising – like, more women work part-time because of caring responsibilities, and part-time work is paid less. But we also discovered stuff that was genuinely shocking – did you know that, over time, the more women go into an industry the less everyone in that industry is paid?[5]

Alongside researching the statistics, during the R&D we spoke to lots of women (and a few men) – aged 18-80+, some mothers, some not, all with different careers and experiences. We wanted to know about their experiences of the Gender Economic Gap, and how they felt about it.

To be honest, this was the bit I felt really nervous about. What if no one wanted to talk to us? We carefully planned creative workshops to gently guide people into talking, and Nat and I talked LOADS about what we’d do if no one wanted to share anything. Well, we ran the workshops, and drank cups of tea – and, contrary to our worries, it turned out that people really wanted to talk: about the breakdown of their relationships; their experiences on Universal Credit; their feelings of inadequacy around money. Also, their powerhouse moments – grafting their way up the career ladder, starting a pension, getting a mortgage.

I had more questions I wanted to ask so I posted on Facebook, and soon more women started getting in touch. Friends from university, old work colleagues. Women who I think are brilliant and kick arse, and who’ve got it all together, got in touch to tell me how they made sacrifices for their kids and now can’t seem to catch up financially. Or how they’ve been discriminated against in the workplace. Or the effect money (and who earns it) has on their relationship. One friend told me that she feels she ‘colluded in her own oppression’, and I started to notice that sentiment peering out behind the stories other women told me: I was naïve, I should have made different choices, it’s my own fault.

That really resonated for me – I’ve felt the same. This guilt and shame is more common than we think. The economic system is stacked against women, and yet there are so many of us privately thinking that it’s our own fault. But then, I suppose it’s hard to live your whole life with a lower price tag and not be affected by that.

I cried a lot in those two weeks of R&D. It’s been emotional, after all this time, to bring more women into the creation process. To be reminded that Nat and I are not the only ones who are affected by this, and we’re not the only ones who’re angry and upset. Because it’s really, really personal: money. Within a capitalist system, what we earn is fundamentally linked to how much we’re worth. British people don’t tend to be comfortable talking about how much money we have – but it’s bloody important that we do it anyway – and I was massively touched and grateful to the people who were so generous with their stories.

Our two weeks of research and development are done, now. We know much more about who we want to work with, what the show might look like, which stories we need to tell. We know that Nat & Vic’s Guide to Being an Independent Women has got glitter in it. And superbly spangly stretchy costumes. We know that it’s got statistics and pie charts and chocolate coins.

So now what? There is a long way to go before we’ve got a finished show and an audience to share it with. It’s daunting to think about just how much work there is to do – how long the road is and how we are AT BEST only halfway there. But there’s only really one thing to do: start. One step in front of the other.

[1] 2019 figures for all workers, ref. Office of National Statistics

[2] A good summary can be found here https://www.pensionspolicyinstitute.org.uk/media/3226/201907-understanding-the-gender-pensions-gap-executive-summ_.pdf

[3] A good sum up here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-47659560/pink-tax-should-personal-care-products-for-women-cost-more

[4] https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/pregnancy-and-maternity-discrimination-forces-thousands-new-mothers-out-their-jobs

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/upshot/as-women-take-over-a-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html This article references US data but is a pithier summary than I’ve found on this phenomenon in the UK.