The gender pay gap and IWD
We need more and better than this. One resounding message: Let’s talk about pay baby.
It was quite interesting to observe International Women’s Day which is usually a round of self-congratulatory high fives and gushing gratitude, some of it as authentic as a Kardashian pout.
I wrote why this year I was underwhelmed and even concerned about IWD2022, despite the #BreakTheBias hashtag which is completely my thing. Why? Because we are going backwards. That has to be said loudly and clearly.
I thought I would be an outlier on this, but I was wrong. One thing that struck me was that many voices felt the same. There is a consensus we need more and better than this. The one resounding message: let’s talk about pay baby.
Fellow outliers
These are just some of the fellow outliers whose posts I came across on 8th March who also agree that International Women’s Day is losing its edge.
Cindy Gallop who likes to blow shit up says “Don’t empower me, pay me.”
Kate Graham, Head of Content at Unleash commented “But the day itself now often gets hijacked and it is important to understand that the world is no longer binary. Things need to evolve.”
Michèle Mees, Brussels-based Global Ambassador for Inclusion, queried men saying they wanted to do something because they had a daughter “But what he is also (implicitly) saying, is that women today will have to wait another generation for gender parity. What about the women in his organization today?“
Alice Stephenson, Founder of Stephenson Law, highlighted the issues facing the legal profession discussed by Amy Diehl in her article for HBR around gender bias in male dominated industries.
Isabella Lenarduzzi, Founder of JUMP shared how globally “women are only given two-thirds of the rights of women.”
Lisa Mulligan, Singapore based Diversity and Inclusion Leader told us she wanted to “break up with International Women’s Day “
Madison Butler, the Blue Haired Unicorn encouraged us to celebrate all women not just the ones that “make us feel comfortable”
Real hero
The part of the day which made my brown eyes blue was the automated bot account, @PayGapApp. This bot calls out companies on Twitter that were retweeting their support for IWD. The bot responded by revealing the gender pay gap percentage of each company.
Companies had gaps ranging from the minimal to as much as 73.2%. Sectors ranged from education, healthcare, law, investment banking and others. There was some scrambling around to delete their original tweets. So @PayGapApp ran a thread on which tweets were deleted.
This was really a case of you can run but not hide!
The creators are Francesca Lawson and Ali Fensome both work in social media and technology. Fensome is a software developer and Lawsons is a freelance copywriter and social media manager. They were able to use the 2017 U.K. law that mandates companies report pay difference between men and women.
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Focus on pay
So let’s stop International Women’s Day from losing its edge, get this thing back on track next year by doing something meaningful. I think the next hashtag should be #LetsTalkAboutPayBaby.
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Look at these stats. We need to move the needle. Let’s talk about pay, baby!
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