Samira Ahmed wins against BBC in equal pay case

In what promises to go down in history of newsrooms...BBC Presenter Samira Ahmed won her sex discrimination equal pay case against the BBC, a judge at the London Central Employment Tribunal has ruled. Samira Ahmed, after the judgement said: “No woman wants to have to take action against their own employer”. She also added, “I’m now looking forward to continuing to do my job, to report on stories and not being one”. She tweeted saying, "Very important. I’d like to thank the judge and panel members of my employment tribunal for their time and consideration and their judgement. Thank you."

The judgement said her work was like that done by Jeremy Vine, who anchored Points of Views on the BBC and that the public British broadcaster had not been able to prove the pay gap wasn't because of sex discrimination.

Ahmed after the announcement said she was "glad it's been resolved". "No woman wants to have to take action against their own employer," she said, adding: "I love working for the BBC."

In response, the BBC insisted the pay for Ahmed and Vine "was not determined by their gender" according to a news report BBC put out.

"I'm now looking forward to continuing to do my job, to report on stories and not being one".

Ahmed had told the court, she "could not understand how pay for me, a woman, could be so much lower than Jeremy Vine, a man, for presenting very similar programmes and doing very similar work".

Wonderful & fully appropriate & deserved judgement in your favour noted a tweet by David Rogers who said "well done for making the claim - not just for you but potentially loads of other women."

Voices reviewed newsroom pay gaps and found journalist pay was discriminated based on gender. The survey commissioned by unions saw that union-represented men made $88,421 a year on average versus women who averaged $76,744. That’s an $11,678 difference.

BBC Not New to Controversy on Pay

In July 2017, in response to a demand from the UK government as a condition of its new royal charter, the BBC published a list of all employees who earned more than £150,000. Of the 96 BBC employees making over this threshold, 62 were men and 34 were women, and of the seven highest earners, all were men.

The BBC has in the past defended the high salaries that were revealed in its report from 2017, but pledged to achieve equality between men and women on air by 2020.