The latest numbers from Folio about who makes what in the world of magazine editing reaffirm what we already know: women make less money than men in comparable positions. Male editors-in-chief or editorial directors of magazines make $100,800 to women’s $85,100. For executive editors, men pull down $84,200 to women’s $65,700. And for senior editors, men make $63,600 to the $58,200 women take home in salary. What those numbers don’t tell us is how to start rectifying those pay gaps, which, as Folio editor Bill Mickey told The Atlantic Wire, start to seem inevitable: “We don’t have any further insight into that number, except that the gap has historically been about the same and I believe aligns with national trends across other industries.” We’ve collected data on gender and pay and gender and bylines for a long time. But if we want things to change, we need to start cross-referencing these numbers to see who’s doing worse, who’s doing better, and why.
Folio’s numbers, for example, break out pay not just by gender, but by whether the editors at business-to-business publications, consumer magazines, and trade publications, where they are geographically, by size of publication, and by years in the business. Looking at the numbers by gender alone are discouraging—they make it look like everyone is doing badly. But if we started cross-referencing those numbers, we might be able to see if some kinds of publications do better than others. Are women able to get a leg up in business-to-business magazines? Are the numbers skewed by bigger-than-normal pay gaps in New York, the center of the magazine industry? Are the numbers closer to parity in entry-level positions, indicating that time is doing the work to change a culture of pay inequality that magazines previously haven’t done?
These are the same kinds of questions that it would be useful to apply in film and television as well, where there is much less comprehensive salary data in any case. Knowing if women do better in dramas or comedies, in shows or films produced by different studios or airing on different networks or distributed by different companies would help us figure out who’s doing exceptionally poorly, and who’s made strides.
Until we figure out who’s doing better and who’s doing worse, we won’t be able to start asking questions about the specific cultures and practices that produce pay gaps and those that are proving successful at closing them. There are challenges, to that, of course, most significant that these surveys survive on some kind of anonymity. The organizations and individuals who are doing poorly would never want to be exposed as being so. And even organizations that do better may be hesitant to step forward to talk about their practices, for risk of exposing themselves to scrutiny for the work that still remains, and to questions from their own employees about whatever gaps persist. The fact that we lack information about salaries is intentional, and always to the benefit of companies that pay those salaries. Without accurate, cross-referenced data, it’s difficult for individuals to know if they’re being paid fairly and to negotiate if they’re not. And without those numbers, it’s impossible for us to identify industry-wide best practices, either. Numbers like these are an opening step in a road towards actual, useful transparency, rather than the end of it.
This blog originally appeared in Think Progress on September 27, 2012. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Alyssa Rosenberg is a culture reporter for ThinkProgress.org. She is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com and The Loop 21. Alyssa grew up in Massachusetts and holds a B.A. in humanities from Yale University. Before joining ThinkProgress, she was editor of Washingtonian.com and a staff correspondent at Government Executive. Her work has appeared in Esquire.com, The Daily, The American Prospect, The New Republic, National Journal, and The Daily Beast.
