The creator of the BBC crime drama Happy Valley has spoken about gender discrimination in the TV industry, claiming that men are “trusted more” and that women “have to prove they’re going to be good at it”.
Sally Wainwright said the atmosphere on Coronation Street, which she used to write for, was “overwhelmingly male” and that the industry remains tough.
Wainwright’s comments came after a list of the BBC’s highest paid on-air stars revealed just a third of its top earners are women and that the top seven are all men. The BBC’s list of stars earning more than £150,000 last year did not include high-profile female presenters such as Emily Maitlis, Sarah Montague and Louise Minchin despite their male co-presenters all featuring. John Humphrys, who presents the Today programme on Radio 4 alongside Montague as well as Mastermind on BBC1, was paid more than £600,000 last year.
![Sally Wainwright - TV writer [ Happy Valley, Last Tango in Halifax, Scott & Bailey etc] and director. Photo by Sarah Lee NB - PICTURE APROVAL HAS BEEN GRANTED [BY THE EDITOR] AS A CONDITION OF THE INTERVIEW!!! DONT’ PUBLISH WITHOUT GETTING THEM CLEARED. SHE WAS VERY VERY NERVOUS ABOUT HAVING HER PIC TAKEN AFTER HAVING SOME BAD EXPERIENCES BEFORE. THE CAT [MERLIN] WAS ALSO A REQUEST OF HERS!](https://media.guim.co.uk/92e75f38e1986eb4f3c6daa01c4523777a0eed3b/86_0_5173_3103/1000.jpg)
More than 40 of the BBC’s most high-profile female stars wrote to Tony Hall, the director general, calling on him to urgently correct the gender pay gap. In response Hall wrote that closing the pay gap had been “a personal priority over the last four years” and pledged that both employees and the public would see a marked difference once the salaries were published again next year.
Wainwright suggested to the Radio Times magazine that an upcoming profile of her on The South Bank Show, the arts programme, had taken longer to be broadcast because she was a woman.
“The South Bank Show did [male writers] Paul Abbott and Russell T Davies years ago, but I’ve been overlooked,” she said in the interview with the magazine.
Happy Valley, which starred Sarah Lancashire as a Yorkshire-based policewoman, was one of the most-acclaimed UK programmes broadcast last year. Wainwright also wrote Last Tango in Halifax and At Home with the Braithwaites after working on Coronation Street, the ITV soap.
Wainwright said she was one of three female writers on Coronation Street out of a team of 15.
“The whole atmosphere was overwhelmingly male and even now it’s tough,” she said. “There are so many fewer women writers and directors. A lot of it is to do with women’s confidence. Women don’t put themselves forward as writers.
“Men are trusted more, it’s just assumed they’ll be good at something. Whereas women have to prove they’re going to be good at it.”
