New York Times editor Jill Abramson was Last weekeditor Jill Abramson was fired , amid reports that a disagreement over pay, compared to her male predecessor, was partly to blame.

The paper's publisher denied that pay had anything to do with it. But it meant there was one less woman in charge at a major media institution, in an industry in which men still occupy most of the top jobs.

Last week BuzzFeed asked 900 journalists in the US what they earn in a snapshot survey and found a large disparity especially at senior levels.

We wanted to do the same in the UK. Between Monday and Tuesday we received 358 responses to our non-scientific and entirely anonymous survey of UK journalists, asking just four simple questions: are you male or female? How much do you earn? How senior are you? And, do you think you are underpaid?

Our sample wasn't random nor weighted evenly – our online poll attracted answers from more women than men. To get this data, we emailed a link to an online survey to more than 1,000 journalists working in newspapers, magazines, specialist consumer and B2B publishers and broadcast news, across the UK. BuzzFeed staff took part, as did many personal contacts and people listed on industry database Gorkana.

What we got was a very small snapshot of a much wider problem.