> and men are paid more for similar value of work

That's the thing. These different people don't bring similar value. When you work as a tv show star the value of your work isn't what you do but how many people will listen to you. You're not paid based on your "Senior TV Show Performer" role (or whatever title is being used in this industry) but based on your personality, your past and current successes, your potential awards, your negotiations skills, etc. If you can make the company feels that you will reach a large audience and that they will get a good return on investment, your market value will go higher.

There are loads of examples within the dataset that give examples of direct comparisons (news readers for example). There is not a single female newsreader who earns anything like what the male equivalents do. I call wilful ignorance.

time in service accounts for some - but then again male newsreaders have longer careers

I would say that, while the BBC salary thing is obviously concerning, it’s also a bad example for the general case.

It’s a datapoint clearly demonstrating that women aren’t paid the same as men for the same work. I’m not sure you couldn’t dismiss every example so trivially.

The entertainment industry is one of the worst possible places to look to try and define "same work". You can easily have two people sat next to eachother where the audience wouldn't care if one was replaced but would leave if the other was. It's like saying musicians should all be paid the same.

I'm left wing and feminist as they come but this gender pay gap narrative is so consistently misrepresented it drives me mad. We're slipping into a society where all professions have quotas because everyone is terrified of a false narrative.

Are you sure about that? I couldn't find any information showing that men and women were paid differently for the same work.

You probably don't know what each of the people does; someone like Emily Maitlis who earns < £150k - her co-host who does the exact same job earns up to £299k. My guess the man here doing identical jobs earns about twice as much. There are many examples of this in the released information.

But most organisations aren't in showbiz where say George Clooney gest more than say a lead in a tv show.

Also BBC presenters may work on several shows and your paid per show as I understand it.

I don't want "similar". I want sources proving that women are paid "much less" for the same amount of the same work.

I know large UK companies that have this problem also BME and disabled people also get paid less -- I cant say who for professional reasons