A storm has been brewing behind the scenes at the BBC for a number of years now, and this week the skies peeled back and the thunder began to roar. Speak to almost any female journalist at the organisation and they will tell you that there have been concerns about the pay gap between male and female employees for a long time. In many cases, senior managers were directly asked whether women were on the same pay as comparable male colleagues. Few enquiries had a satisfactory outcome – the female journalists were either ignored, belittled or made to feel as if they were being troublesome.

Pay scales within the BBC are a very complex area, especially when it comes to so-called talent. Individuals are on different contracts – some freelance, some staff, some fixed-term. Different roles have different levels of production input and hours involved. And of course, there is the thorny but undeniable issue of “market value” – how much does the licence-fee paying audience switch on to hear or watch a particular presenter? How much would another organisation pay to steal that presenter away?

My own case isn’t entirely straightforward for this reason. I get paid around £130,000 to co-present the BBC 5 Live breakfast programme with my good friend and colleague Nicky Campbell, who is on around £400,000 for the same job (although he also presents arguably the country’s foremost daily phone-in as part of that). He’s been presenting on network radio for 30 years, and has a much greater public profile than me, thanks to his time at Radio 1 and hosting Wheel of Fortune (a fact we love reminding him about) among other things.

Should we be on the same money? Probably not. I have never argued for that. There has to be room for recognising experience and market value, I get that. I’ve known how much he is paid for some time – we’ve talked it over frequently and he’s been incredibly supportive of me throughout my career. In many ways I’ve directly benefited from working with him and learned from his skills as a broadcaster. But it’s a partnership, and we both rely on each other.

Nicky Campbell presenting 5 Live. Photograph: Roscoe & Rutter/BBC

Equal jobs should mean equal pay – but where there is disparity, is the gap justified? Are the women paid too little, or the men paid too much?

Tony Hall has acknowledged there is a gender pay gap, and it is right and understandable that women now come forward together to ask for action to be taken. Not some vague aspiration to end pay discrimination by 2020, but a coherent plan to encourage transparency and restore faith in the salary-setting system.

It’s been amazing and encouraging to see how women across the BBC have come together on this. Whatsapp groups and email threads are flying around. It has thrown up issues well beyond basic pay – including the types of contracts being offered to women and changes to terms of employment which may disproportionately affect part-time staff.

This affects women throughout the organisation. People have said to me on Twitter: why are you making such a fuss? Isn’t it distasteful to complain about a six-figure salary when nurses are struggling to get from one week to the next?

My answer to that is simple – do you support equality in the workplace? If so, regardless of your pay or position, isn’t it right and proper to use your voice when you have one to encourage better working conditions for all your colleagues? This week on our phone-in, I hosted a discussion on pay inequality in other sectors and along other divides – age, race, social class and physical ability. If #BBCWomen can encourage those conversations and empower individuals in other workplaces to challenge inequality, then it’s a decent use of the licence fee.

This process may make no difference to my salary at the end of the day – and that would be fine by me. I get paid a lot of money to do a job I love, and I know what a privilege it is to say that. My own line manager has been incredibly supportive to me during more challenging periods in my career and has gone some way to addressing my concerns about pay.

But I stand in solidarity with my female colleagues who are now working hard to make sure genuine progress is made in this area. I would personally support some kind of independent audit of all pay across the BBC, so that trust can be restored in the organisation and Tony Hall’s fine ambition to lead the way on gender equality can be realised.

The BBC is a fantastic organisation to work for in many ways. But being publicly funded, it also has a responsibility to set the standard. In the future, the BBC could be a brilliant beacon for gender equality right across the country, and now is the time to seize that opportunity.