Gender Pay Gaps and How to Learn a Language
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gender Pay Gap This week the Office for National Statistics has published analysis trying to find out why it is that on average women are paid less than men in specific industries and occupations. We examine their findings, as well as taking a look at the current discussion about equal pay at the BBC.
Alcohol reaction times We take a look at a study that suggests that people's reaction speeds are affected over time by regular drinking. It recommends that official guidelines for the amount of alcohol consumed a week should be lowered. But what does the evidence show?
Bus announcements - when is too many? Transport for London has introduced a new announcement on its buses to warn travellers that the bus is about to move. We discuss the benefit of such messages.
How many words do you need to speak a language? Ein bier bitte? Loyal listener David made a new year's resolution to learn German. Three years later, that's about as far as he's got. Keen to have something to aim for, he asked More or Less how many words you really need to know in order to speak a language. We find out with help from Professor Stuart Webb, and put Tim through his paces to find out how big his own English vocabulary is.
Producer: Charlotte McDonald.
(Photo: Man and woman working on a car production plant. Credit: SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, your weekly guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life. I'm Tim Harford. This week is the world too full of |
| 0:46.7 | electronic voices nagging us about the obvious. Please hold on the bus is about to |
| 0:52.2 | move. Is it true that just one glass of wine or pint of beer each day could put you at risk? |
| 1:00.0 | We'll ask how many words you need to master in order to say you've learned a language. |
| 1:05.0 | But first, are men and women paid fairly in the workplace? |
| 1:09.0 | And what does it mean to be paid fairly? |
| 1:12.0 | A new law requires any organization in the UK with |
| 1:15.8 | more than 250 employees to publish data on the overall difference between what |
| 1:21.2 | men and women are paid known known as the Gender Pay Gap. |
| 1:25.0 | And this week, the Office for National Statistics published a report on the Gender Pay Gap across |
| 1:30.1 | the UK. |
| 1:31.6 | My producer Charlotte McDonald has been looking into the story. |
| 1:35.0 | There are lots of ways to think about gender and pay and in some ways the gender pay gap |
| 1:39.3 | is the simplest and easiest to explain. You look at every worker in the country, regardless of their job, |
| 1:45.4 | and compare the average salary of men and women. This week the Office for National Statistics |
... |
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