It’s well-documented that there’s a pay gap between men and women in the same roles. The oft-cited statistic is that the average full-time female worker makes just 80.7 cents for every dollar her male counterpart makes; that gap worsens significantly along racial and geographic lines.
In the tech industry, requiring companies to be transparent about the pay gap among their own workers could attract and retain talent, according to a new report by research firm and compensation management provider beqom—but workers don’t think their employers take that transparency very seriously.
Some 82 percent of employees in the tech industry were aware of the pay gap in their country. Interestingly, older employees were more likely than younger ones to have this awareness; 69 percent of Millennials reported awareness, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers. (The report’s authors surveyed 1,600 employed adults in the US and the UK who work at companies of 250 employees or more. The report was sponsored by Microsoft; beqom’s US headquarters are in Southport, Connecticut.)
Pay gap transparency could be a boon to companies looking to attract top tech talent, particularly women. Thirty-seven percent of workers in the software and technology industry said they would seek a job at a company that had a smaller pay gap than their own workplaces.
Among the women surveyed, a full 70 percent said they would be more willing to work at a company that discloses its pay gap statistics annually.
In the US, equal pay protections are relatively weak. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires that men and women be given equal pay for equal work in the same establishment, but this has not closed the persistent chasm overall. In March, the House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would expand upon the Equal Pay Act by banning employers from asking job applicants how much they previously made, prohibiting companies from retaliating against workers who share wage information, and increasing penalties for equal pay violations. The bill now sits in the Senate. (The first Paycheck Fairness Act was introduced by then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2005.)
Here in Massachusetts, legislators updated the state equal pay law last July to prevent employers from asking about a candidate's wage history, allow workers to discuss their pay freely, and mandate that employees who are "comparable" be paid equally.
beqom’s report found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that women overwhelmingly support a national law mandating companies to disclose gender pay gap figures. About 82 percent of the women surveyed support the idea, compared to just 61 percent of men. Still, respondents were not optimistic that a law would effectively close the gap: Only 66 percent overall believed it would help.
In the meantime, workers can pressure their employers to establish policies both to lessen the gender pay gap within their workplace and to be transparent about it internally and externally. As it stands, just 13 percent of US workers said their employer had announced a commitment to solve the pay gap.
But systemic change requires personal sacrifice—and it seems many workers are not willing to make it.
Only one in three employees said they would give up workplace perks, such as free lunches, unlimited vacation, and flexible remote work, if it meant women would be paid equally to men in their company. More than four in 10 would not. Younger employees might ultimately lead the charge to change this: 42 percent of Gen Z workers said they’d actively seek work at a company with a small pay gap, even if it meant leaving their own workplace.
“With Gen Zs more likely than their older colleagues to support pay gap legislation, switching to employers that have published lower pay gaps than their own, and giving up their own workplace perks in favor of equal pay, firms positioning themselves as leaders in the movement will be better able to attract and retain the next generation of workers,” the report’s authors wrote.
