{"text":[[{"start":5.56,"text":"The other day, I was chatting with a friend about how we got into journalism when I suddenly remembered my most disastrously embarrassing job interview."}],[{"start":14.04,"text":"It happened years ago, not long after I arrived in London and spotted an ad for a deputy news magazine editor. The advert was highly detailed. Applicants had to send in an assessment of the publication outlining what worked and what did not, along with compelling cover story ideas."}],[{"start":30.72,"text":"Having recently edited a national news magazine in Australia, I was full of thoughts. But there was one question in the advert that stumped me. What was my preferred salary?"}],[{"start":40.58,"text":"I asked two other journalists I knew in London, both men, for advice. Each told me to ask for what I had been paid in Sydney, plus more for the abysmal exchange rate and the cost of London living, which I did."}],[{"start":52.68,"text":"To my delight, I got an interview. A team of people politely listened as I wanged on about their magazine, whose editor then took me off to a side room for a further chat. He loved my application, he said, but there was just one thing. How wedded was I to that salary I had mentioned? “Because it’s a lot more than what I’m paid.”"}],[{"start":71.32,"text":"At the time, I was mortified. My face burned. What an idiot I had been to name such an outlandish figure. Why hadn’t I done a better job of researching the going rate for deputy magazine editors?"}],[{"start":83.16,"text":"Today, though, I recall that moment fondly. Women are always being told they cement the gender pay gap by asking for too little in pay negotiations, and there was my younger self, gormlessly doing the opposite."}],[{"start":95.36,"text":"I also think of how much easier it would have been if that advert had simply listed the salary on offer. That way, I would have known if it was worth my while to apply and everyone else, inside and outside the magazine, would have had a better idea of whether their pay was fair, or if they should be demanding more. This is of course precisely why so many employers do not spell out salaries in public."}],[{"start":116.8,"text":"For similar reasons, job hunters are often asked to disclose their salary history, even though this is an excellent way to bake in the lower pay endured by so many women, ethnic minorities and others."}],[{"start":127.56,"text":"It’s tough to ask for £50,000 for a job, no matter how well qualified you are, if you have just revealed your last role paid £35,000, which it might have if you had been doing the same work at, say, a charity."}],[{"start":142.32,"text":"Women were told for years to just “lean in” and become savvier negotiators. Thankfully, this approach is fading as research shows the benefits of policies aimed at fixing the practice of negotiations, instead of fixing the women."}],[{"start":157.6,"text":"This is why the EU has brought in a directive requiring employers to do two things: tell job seekers about starting salaries or pay ranges, and stop asking them about their pay histories. A number of US states already have such measures, which can help to shrink a gender wage gap that averaged 11 per cent across OECD countries in 2023."}],[{"start":178.76,"text":"The deadline to put the EU directive into national law was June 2026, but unfortunately a lot of countries have yet to get there. They include Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, where Indeed data shows that less than 15 per cent of job advertisements include explicit pay information. That number plunges for sectors such as banking and finance that typically have far worse gender pay gaps."}],[{"start":202.22,"text":"No wonder thousands of women are supporting outfits such as Female X Finance, a five-year-old start-up that aims to help boost women’s careers in the financial industry. Its Dutch co-founders just published their second annual survey of the salaries — and bonuses — being paid in investment banking, M&A, private equity and other fields in the UK and the Netherlands."}],[{"start":223.16,"text":"How I wish this type of information, and those pay transparency laws, had been around when I answered that magazine advert all those years ago."}],[{"start":230.88,"text":"If you’re wondering, I never did get the job. It went to an insider, which is probably just as well. I’m sure they did a far better job than I would have done, but I would still like to know how much they were paid."}],[{"start":245.89,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792924697_1838.mp3"}