Lund University Hanna Kenne Publishing Studies FBMK12 Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology Supervisor: Ann Steiner Spring Term 2018 Giving Publishing a Bad Name? A Study of Gender Pay Gap and Gender Segregation in the UK Publishing Industry Abstract This essay has examined the mandatory annual gender pay gap reports published by five of the UK’s biggest publishing organisation. In 2017, a new government legislation concerning gender pay gap transparency was enforced. This legislation states that organisations with an employment number of 250 or more are required to report on their gender pay gap annually. th The first of these annual reports were due by March 30 ,​ 2018. These reports include median ​ and mean average gender pay gap, as well as gender pay gap for bonuses. In addition to this, the reports need to include percentage of the proportion of men and women employed in each quartile. The aim of this essay was to compare these reports in regards to each other, as well as to the UK average gender pay gap to see if there were any substantial differences. The essay also wanted to study sticky floors, glass ceilings and gender segregations to see if these were visible in the publishing industry. Keywords: Gender Equality, Publishing Studies, Gender Pay Gap Report, Sticky Floors, ​ Glass Ceilings, Gender Segregation. 1 Abstract 1 Introduction 3 Purpose 4 Material and Delimitation 4 Method 4 Theory 5 Gender Roles and Gender Hierarchy 5 Gender Structures and Gender Segregation 7 Previous Research 9 Understanding the Gender Pay Gap Report 9 Equal Pay and Gender Pay Gap 10 The Four Paying Quartiles 11 Gender Pay Gap Results 12 Gender Pay Gap Reports 14 Comparative analysis 19 Lower and Lower Middle Quartile 20 Upper Middle and Upper Quartile 23 Discussion 26 Conclusion 28 References 31 2 Introduction Gender equality is one of the most talked about subjects in today’s society, and 2017 saw things such as the #metoo movement, which further sparked the discussions about an unequal society. But what is gender equality, and how do we reach it? According to the English ​ Oxford Living Dictionaries, gender equality is “[t]he state in which access to rights or ​ ​ opportunities is unaffected by gender” (OED) meaning that, regardless of gender, all people should have the same opportunities, rights and responsibilities. An issue that has been discussed for a long time is that women have been, and are to some extent still, paid less than men. Reaching equal pay for equal job would be a big leap forward in reaching gender equality. This essay wants to research how this relates to today’s book industry. In 2015, former Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to eliminate Britain’s gender pay gap in one generation (BBC News). The idea was to do this by using one of the strongest tools in reaching gender equality: transparency. In order to reach such transparency, in 2017, a government gender pay gap legislation was introduced. This legislation states that organisations with an employment number of 250 or more are required to report on their th gender pay gap annually. The first of these annual reports were due by March 30 ,​ 2018. ​ These reports include median and mean average gender pay gap, as well as gender pay gap for bonuses (GPG Reporting Guidance). In addition to this, the reports need to include percentage of the proportion of men and women employed in each quartile. These quartiles are, in other words, salary range divided into 4 sections, from lowest to highest paid. ​ For a long time, the publishing industry has had a reputation of being female dominated. According to Philip Jones, a recent study carried out by the Publishers Association estimates that UK publishing staff is 69% female (The Bookseller). Further, in an article in The Guardian, Stephanie Merritt claims that it is estimated that two thirds of all ​ ​ fiction books sold in the UK are bought by women (Merritt, The Guardian). So not only is the ​ ​ majority of publishing staff women, but it is argued that women dominate all stages of publishing: production, dissemination and consumption. However, the publishing world is not free of gender divisions, and although all publishing sectors are overwhelmingly staffed by women, these articles make it seem as if he industry still has a senior management that is dominated by men. Nonetheless, the publishing industry is seen as “female friendly”, but this 3 essay wants to research if this is apparent in regards to employment level and pay in some of UK’s biggest publishing houses. Purpose By doing a comparative study on five of the biggest UK publishing organisations, this essay intends to discuss and analyse gender segregation within those companies, as well as the difference in pay between their male and female employees. The publishing houses in question are Penguin Random House, Macmillan Publishers, Hachette UK, HarperCollins and Bloomsbury Plc. The essay will examine four main questions: - What are the differences in pay and employment level between men and women in the publishing houses with books on The Guardian’s 2017 bestseller list? ​ ​ - How do the different publishing organizations gender pay gap reports look in comparison with each other? - What types of gender segregations can be found in the five publishing houses? - Is the idea of sticky floors and glass ceilings true for the UK publishing industry? Material and Delimitation The material for this study is based on the gender pay gap reports from five UK publishing companies. These were chosen by two criterions. Firstly, they were all represented on The ​ Guardian’s top 100 bestselling books from 2017. This chart is made up by books across genres, and is ranked according to how many copies each book has sold. Twenty different publishing houses were represented on this list. Secondly, to qualify for the obligatory gender pay gap reports, the organisations in question must be staffed by 250 or more people. Penguin Random House, Macmillan Publishers, Hachette UK, HarperCollins and Bloomsbury Plc were the five publishing organizations that met these criterions. Each gender pay gap report was compiled by the publishing organisation itself. Method A quantitative approach was employed to collect data to establish which of the publishing houses this essay would research. To do so, a list of books from The Guardian’s bestseller list ​ ​ that fell within the scope of this essay was compiled with information such as imprint, 4 publishing house and parent organisation (see appendix 1). The gender pay gap reports from the five parent organisations that qualified were then gathered from the online databases for gender pay gap reports on the UK government’s website. The gender pay gap reports were then analysed in a attempt to show gender divisions in employment levels and pay quartiles within all five publishing houses. As these reports vary in information not all findings were equally extensive. The discoveries of this analysis were presented in charts and diagrams, as well as explanatory text. The five gender pay gap reports were then discussed in an comparative analysis in order to unveil any difference in gender segregation, and in the division of men and women across paying quartiles. These results were discussed in relation to gender theories. Theory Gender Roles and Gender Hierarchy Gender roles and gender hierarchy are two subjects that have been discussed for a long time. The term “gender-roles” focuses on the fact that gender is a taught behaviour, and that all people learn, as well as re-enact, the given gender-coded roles that society has set out for them. According to Tom Henthorne, the idea of separating biological sex from gender was scientifically and theoretically acknowledged in the 1950’s (50). Judith Lorber, professor ​ emerita of sociology and women’s studies, argues in the book The Inequality Reader: ​ ​ Contemporary and Foundational Readings in Race, Class and Gender, that sex is determined ​ by the genitalia we are born with, while gender is a taught phenomenon that takes shape by, for example, name, clothing, as well as by how we are treated. She further argues that “as soon as [children] can talk, they start to refer to themselves as members of their gender” (277), and start practicing their constructed gender roles. Lorber suggests that the reason for this is that from the moment the sex of a child is discovered, that child is treated as either a boy or a girl (277). Considering this, it would seem as if gender is not an innate behaviour, but that of a social construction. In the making of gender roles, a gender hierarchy is also developed. In this hierarchy, one of the gender roles must be the superior. This order can be described through gender systems. Yvonne Hirdman, a Swedish professor of history, was one of the first people to introduce the concepts of gender systems in Sweden. Although it was not always like this, 5 nowadays the word gender is most often used to distinguish between culture and biology (Hirdman 50). Hirdman mentions the theorist Gayle Rubin, who in 1984 coined the phrase “sex/gender system” or “sex/gender/sexuality system”. Rubin describes this system as “the ​ set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (159). In other words, Rubin proposes that the link between social gender, biological sex and sexual attraction is, in fact, a product of culture. What her theories, according to Hirdman, fail to problematize, is the male dominant relationship of power between the different sexes (50). Hirdman describes the gender system as standing on a foundation made up by two principles: dichotomy and hierarchy (51).