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Birte Meier
Photo: Sebastian Pfütze / Penguin Random House
The termination agreement that ZDF presented to me in June 2022 is three closely printed pages long.
Never again should I be allowed to say that I was discriminated against: "In particular, the editor undertakes not to repeat, literally or in substance, her claim that she received lower remuneration than male editors because she is a woman," it says laborious.
If I resist, I should pay 5000 euros.
Every week, mind you, at least for persistent violations.
Claims for damages should come on top of that.
For ZDF, on the other hand, no contractual penalties are planned.
Only under these conditions is the broadcaster willing to pay me a sum that would at least partially compensate me for years of underpayment: ZDF offers 110,000 euros plus four months' leave for my silence.
A tempting amount of money, even if male colleagues have earned even more for the same job over the years.
So why is the broadcaster offering me this sum?
It shouldn't be compensation for discrimination - but compensation for giving up my job.
A muzzled termination agreement.
The document contains ten paragraphs, the content of which should not be known to anyone.
The official terminology is: »The parties will only inform third parties that they have mutually agreed to terminate the contractual relationship in return for payment of a severance payment, the amount of which cannot be disclosed, while maintaining their legal positions mutually. The fee payers should therefore not even should be able to find out what it would have cost her that I let myself be gag and finally give me peace.
Termination agreements like this are one reason why a kind of silent cartel has formed around wage discrimination.
A black hole in which all the women's stories disappear that can no longer be listened to.
The insidious dynamics that a complaint all too often triggers can develop unhindered in secret.
'I was muzzled.
I want my voice back!" says one of the women who US film mogul Harvey Weinstein wanted to ban from speaking: The statement comes from Maria Schrader's film adaptation of the research of the New York Times, which was published under the title "She Said". .
At the latest with the #MeToo debate, such confidentiality obligations have fallen into disrepute in the USA and Great Britain.
And so California, like some other US states, now prohibits companies from requiring non-disclosure clauses in settlements of discrimination cases.
In the UK, the BBC and private television Channel 4 have come under fire for trying to silence some equal pay complainants in this way.
If you want to talk, you should be allowed to talk.
You don't break a stigma alone.
And not in secret.
When Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence found out after a hacker attack on the production company Sony how blatantly much less she earned than her male colleagues, she was, as she wrote in 2015, downright surprised by her initial reaction: »I wasn't angry at Sony – but on myself. I failed at negotiation because I gave up too soon (...) I didn't want to be considered 'difficult' or 'spoiled'.
At the time it seemed like a good idea to me.
Until I looked up the salaries on the internet and realized that certainly not a single man I worked with gave a damn if he seemed 'difficult' or 'spoiled'.
(…) Not anymore.
I'm no longer trying to find a 'charming' way of speaking my mind while still being endearing.
Fuck that!«
Anyone interested in underpaid women will hear the stories of women everywhere.
At the hotel reception in rural Austria.
At the seminar for executives in the Berlin commuter belt.
They are passed on quietly, in a hushed tone, the way one asks about a tampon in an office—somewhat embarrassed, but aware of the need for the question.
Already at lunch, with men and superiors at the table, the topic is taboo again.
I will not sign ZDF's code of silence and will give notice in June 2022 as usual.
The silence of women has consequences for everyone - including politics.
In a few days, on March 7th, it will be that time again: Equal Pay Day.
Denouncing the great injustice is part of good form among those responsible year after year.
Otherwise, politicians do very little.
The wage gap is still almost nowhere else in Europe as high as in this country: 18 percent.
However, there is no sign of a proper law that would make companies responsible.
Last December, the traffic light coalition was not even able to bring itself to agree to a new EU directive for more equal pay.
Instead, we continue to blame the women, their supposed penchant for lower-paid jobs - hairdressers instead of electronics technicians - or their alleged lack of negotiating talent.
"Wage discrimination is the dirty secret of the gender pay gap," writes the BBC's former China correspondent in her book Equal.
In 2018, she quit her job when she learned the Washington DC correspondent was earning at least 50 percent more.
Together with her colleagues - and colleagues - she started a public protest.
In the end, the broadcaster gave in.
Successful lawsuits for equal pay have long been part of everyday life in Great Britain and the USA.
In Germany, on the other hand, hardly anyone resists, certainly not in public.
No wonder: the Pay Transparency Act, introduced with great fanfare in 2017, turns out to be an unusable declaration of intent that has been successfully watered down by the business lobby.
To make matters worse: lower labor courts ignored binding European law for a long time.
As a result, procedures have been particularly cumbersome, if not impossible.
In the meantime, the Federal Labor Court has ended this practice and made it clear in three landmark judgments that the legislature has so far only insufficiently fulfilled its obligations.
However, to ensure that women are no longer held responsible for their lower earnings, more is needed: a cultural change.
No non-disclosure agreements.
Because we finally have to talk: about money and about all the things that can go wrong when a woman actually demands equal pay.
This is the only way we have a chance of the legislator finally clearing the hurdles.
We have to recognize that many are paid less simply because they are women.
And that it should be a matter of course to take action against it.
This text is based on Birte Meier's book »Equal Pay Now! Finally the same salary for women and men«, published on March 1st.
