Women still earn less than men over the span of their careers.
You may have come across the recent news story of Kimberly Nguyen, a young UX writer at a big tech firm who found a job listing for the same position she holds. She had been asking for a raise for months, was denied repeatedly, then saw her own job listed on LinkedIn for a $32K - $90K range higher than her salary. Her posts about the experience went viral.
It means something to have a face to put on the push for pay equity, and she’s received a lot of referrals, but no raise. “I can’t wait around for my company to do the right thing,” she tweeted, and noted that others in her firm are also done with waiting. “About to lose a lot of talent,” she posted about her company.
Pay equity is not a sexy term. While it might be described as a hot topic —“pay equity is trending these days” — I read somewhere, we all know it’s not hot. Say the words to someone involved in policy making who’s just not that into the concept, and you get an eye roll. Talk to a forward-thinking recruiting or compensation team dealing with a recalcitrant legacy company in a non-disclosure state and you may get a groan. NY and a host of other states instituted pay transparency laws to start fixing the problem, but there are some who consider the laws themselves the problem now.
A recent study reported in HBR notes that beyond the intended benefits of pay transparency, empirical research shows the impact is “complicated” as the authors noted (both men, incidentally). One problem: it requires employers to allocate resources to beef up the salaries of those traditionally underpaid. Is that a bad thing? Another problem: it can cause disengagement and lower productivity as employees discover their place on the company’s overall compensation continuum. Exposing glaring imbalances may be a problem, but the problem is the glaring imbalances.
Nope: pay equity is not a hot topic no matter who’s trying to keep the discussion going and finally undo pay inequity, and maybe that’s what we should call it: Pay inequity. Three reasons:
1. We all get numb to phrases repeated again and again, and they lose their impact.
2. Noting inequity is more accurate and gives us something to repair rather than something to aspire to, which connects to the “bad news travels faster and bears more weight than good news” theory. You don’t fix an aspiration. You fix a problem.
3. Culturally we’re still weighed down by a deep-held belief that women are less valuable in the working world and don’t make great leaders, so a term that describes something happening to women isn’t going to be the universal rallying cry we hope.
But The Law Says
While 17 states have pay transparency laws, not all of those laws require salary range disclosures. California, Colorado, NY state and some NY municipalities (Albany, NYC, Ithaca) and Washington State all require — or will require — a “proactive” salary disclosure in a job posting. Other states require a salary disclosure, but not in a job posting — which is where an enormous percentage of people first look for a job (80% of people looked for a job online last year).
Of course within each law is a myriad of details and conditions, which can lead naysayers to complain that the regulations are simply far too complex to know what to do and are placing an undue burden on employers. To that, one could argue: tax laws; and also, a national pay transparency law would at least level the playing field with standardized regulations.
So if pay equity is not an attractive topic, it’s certainly a maddening one — because it’s a transformation that depends on buy-in from all stakeholders across an organization and beyond. Imagine getting the present Congress to agree on a national pay equity law. There are still those who are unconvinced a woman should just simply earn the same as a man. Even for those whose heart is in it, they may be systematically unable to implement the transformation. And if I said “it’s time to right this wrong” to a room of colleagues, I would likely hear some affirmations, no doubt. But I’d also hear that silence. You know that silence.
Numbers, Again
In terms of actions to take right now, perhaps just daylight is a good strategy. We have not achieved pay equity. We’re still in a state of inequity, a.k.a. a problem that needs to be fixed:
• Overall, women still earn about 82 cents for every dollar men earn, depending on the industry (in many, it’s less).
• In a career spanning 44 years, a woman earns half a million less on average than a man.
• Wage disparities widen as women climb the ladder, according to research into 2021 census data by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
• For women managers, it’s bad, as the USGAO report found:
• While women comprise 47% of the workforce only 42% of managers are women.
• Women managers are more likely to be younger (under 40), more educated, and less likely to have a child in their household than male managers.
• Full-time female managers earned 71 cents for every dollar earned by full-time male managers; the gap was worse for women of color:
• Black or African American full time female managers only early 59 cents on the dollar.
• Hispanic or Latina full time female managers, only 56 cents on the dollar.
Being On The Outside Doesn’t Solve It
Apropos to many of you reading this, consulting firms as an industry — which may be actually advising firms on how to undo their pay inequities — have their own wage imbalance woes. Consider McKinsey & Company UK, who revealed a 23.8% gender pay gap among its own staff. By 2021, it had lowered that gap to 22.7%. Technically, that counts as improvement.
McKinsey also coauthored a recent study with Leanin.org about how the toxic workplace is continuing to impact women: women at 41% more likely to experience a toxic workplace than men. “For every female director who is promoted, two women at the same level of authority choose to quit,” the study noted. They’re calling the exodus of women leaders from the workforce “The Great Breakup.” Again, let’s consider the language we’re using as the glass ceiling continues to press down those trying to shatter it.
Nor Does Going Outside
What of non-salaried talent? If you think hiring independent contractors might be a way to circumvent the problem at least in terms of bettering the statistics across a mixed workforce, don’t. A study of 6,000 freelancers found the pay gap isn’t limited to salaried positions: men charge an average of $22.58 more per hour than women, and men charge 48% higher than women in an equivalent role. Further pay transparency among independent talent is a murky question. There are no laws protecting someone from woefully undercutting her rate to get a project.
Inequity Is Not Going Extinct
What if pay equity was as impossible to avoid as genetically modified corn or AI-powered text generation (neither of which was used here)? What if pay inequity was the 8-track, or the gas-guzzling giant sedan, or the MS-DOS, and pay inequity is inevitable progress, equivalent in its inevitability to streaming music, the Cloud, a Prius? We can dream.
In the meantime, empowering the world of work to make the change is going to be a gargantuanly slow and painstaking effort. It’s tempting to try to convince key players of pay equity’s business appeal, but the reasons may hold more or less weight depending on the state of the labor market. We often talk about the overall benefit of pay equity as a good way to bolster an employer brand, but again, bad news travels faster. Ethics? Even for those that insist they are becoming more ethical, in such a competitive, cutthroat economy, that’s a moving target. It doesn’t work to aim high. We just need to aim for equality.
