Equal Pay Day: Working For Pay Parity In Tech And Beyond
Equal Pay Day and 50/50 Day acknowledge the need for gender pay parity.
Fourteen years into the commemoration of Equal Pay Day—or the day in the U.S. that all women catch up to what men earn for a year of work ending December 31, 2019—and women are still strategizing for pay equity. This year that day is March 31.
“Fourteen years into the commemoration of #EqualPayDay and women are still strategizing for #payequity. #WageGap”
It’s not a done deal. Yet.
For women in tech in particular, the path to fair pay is challenging and intersects many sectors of leadership in different fields. It is a complicated scenario with advancement, stalls and roadblocks. But to conquer pay parity in tech would lead to equity in all other related fields.
“For #WomenInTech in particular, the path to fair pay is challenging and intersects many sectors of #leadership”
According to the World Economic Forum, “Women can lead (the tech sector) forward too. Now that technology is all-pervasive, the traditional sector lines have become blurred. Brands that cling to the old structures will find themselves overtaken and left behind. This is when women’s ability to empathize and seek compromise becomes a powerful asset. If technology is supposed to service the whole of humanity, the big decisions need to be taken from a balanced perspective.”
“Equal Pay Day is important to women and men as well because when women and men share equally in power, pay, and position the world will be a better place,” says Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead, and a partner in 50/50 Day.
““#EqualPayDay is important to women and men as well because when women and men share equally in power, pay, and position the world will be a better place,” says @GloriaFeldt.”
“There will be less of what I call the power over attitude and more collaboration and recognition that we have the power to do great things together. It will be much better for children to have parents who are equally engaged in their nurturing and upbringing,” says Feldt, who outlines the mission of Take The Lead to achieve gender parity in leadership across all sectors by 2025.
A new study by Smart Asset of Women in Tech 2020 reports, “Though disheartening at the national level, women have had great success breaking into the tech industry in some cities. In this study, we uncovered the best cities for women working in tech by considering four factors: gender pay gap, earnings after housing costs, women’s representation in the tech workforce and four-year tech employment growth.”
The key findings include, “Only one of five most-populated U.S. cities – Houston – makes it into our top 15 cities for women working in the tech industry. The other big cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Phoenix) fall much further down on our list, with NYC ranking the highest at 27th and Los Angeles the lowest at 47th.”
The gender pay gap in tech has widened. “In 2015, women working in computer and mathematical occupations were paid about 86.9% of what their male counterparts made. This gap has widened over the past five years. In 2018, the national gender pay gap in the tech industry was 83.1%, meaning that women’s earnings relative to men’s decreased by about 3.8%,” Smart Asset reports.
The landscape for women in tech mirrors the challenges and possibilities of women in many other fields.
“The landscape for #WomenInTech mirrors the challenges and possibilities of women in many other fields. #EqualPay”
According to Built In, “Women currently remain highly underrepresented in software engineering (14% of total workforce) and computer science-related jobs (25% of total workforce). In fact, women software engineer hires have only increased 2% over the last 20 years.”
Built In also reports that other numbers of inequity are disturbing. “Just 3% of computing-related jobs are held by African-American women, 6% held by Asian women and 2% held by Hispanic women.
Yet, “positively, women’s earnings are outpacing those of men’s when it comes to high-skill jobs,” according to Built In. “Instead of talking about ‘glass ceilings,’ we should acknowledge that women have a much larger barrier at being hired for technical entry level positions. This ‘broken rung’ in the career ladder already puts women at a disadvantage, which leads tech companies into a cycle of hiring employees with the same gender and race (mainly white males).”
Recently, the Washington Post reported that MIT tenured professor “Sangeeta Bhatia, a successful serial entrepreneur, teamed up with Susan Hockfield, a former MIT president, and Nancy Hopkins, a biologist who uncovered systemic discrimination against women at MIT” for a study of gender discrimination against women in biotech.
“Based on data from MIT alone, the trio found that fewer than 10 percent of 250 start-ups by MIT faculty were founded by women, despite the fact they made up 22 percent of the faculty. If men and women started companies at the same rate, they estimated there would be about 40 biotech start-ups that don’t exist today. A separate study found 11 percent of start-ups spun out of Stanford University had a female founder, while 25 percent of faculty members are women,” The Post reports.
Additionally, the Post reports, “One study, We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding, found biases may even be woven into how business pitches are received. Investors tended to ask male entrepreneurs promotion-focused questions, about the opportunities for their businesses, while female entrepreneurs were asked prevention-focused questions, about the risks of failure. Another study found the same pitch presented by a man was rated more favorably than when it was given by a woman.”
Bias is the foundation of pay inequity in tech as well as opportunity inequity. Feldt acknowledges that addressing the issues of fairness in tech is crucial.
“Bias is the foundation of pay inequity in tech as well as opportunity inequity. #EqualPayDay #Parity”
“Tech is important because it drives so much of the economy and I want women to have their fair share of that wealth and power,” says Feldt, author of No Excuses, creator of a new set of Leadership Power Tool launched recently at the Power Up Conference.
“As a sector, tech has been among the least likely to bring women to full parity in leadership; their numbers are woeful,” Feldt says. “But I say it’s especially important to elevate women in the tech sector because that is where future large companies will be built and I want women to be building them.”
For this year, saluting Equal Pay Day can include watching the 50/50 film created in 2017 by Tiffany Shlain, author, filmmaker and co-founder of the non-profit Let it Ripple: Mobile Films for Global Change, founder of the Webby Awards, and the co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Science. Shlain recently performed a live cinematic essay at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “Dear Human” was a performance based on her new book 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week.
Read more in Take The Lead on the Launch of 50/50 Day
Built In reports that 50% of women said they have experienced gender discrimination at work. In addition, 43% of Americans believe women create a safer, more respectful work environment than men. Only 5% of Americans believe men create a safer work space.
“@BuiltIn reports that 50% of women said they have experienced #gender #discrimination at work. #EqualRights”
Read more in Take The Lead on inspiring women in tech
“I often tell women in my leadership development training to think big and see themselves creating technologies that change the world as much as an iPhone or Google did. I want to see many female Bill Gateses,” Feldt says.
Focusing on growing more women in tech leadership roles is a strategy to close the gender gap in leadership. Ultimately, every niche, discipline and field globally intersects with tech.
“Focusing on growing more women in tech #leadership roles is a strategy to close the #gendergap in leadership.”
“According to the World Economic Forum, the greatest challenge preventing the economic gender gap from closing is women’s under-representation in emerging roles. In cloud computing, just 12% of professionals are women; in engineering and Data and AI, the numbers are 15% and 26% respectively. Unless the sector can balance the ledger by making roles attractive to women, then we risk missing out on the full potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” according to the WEF.
WEF reports, “Research by Deloitte suggests companies with an inclusive culture are six times more likely to be innovative. By staying ahead of changes, they are twice as likely to hit or better financial targets. This means providing female mentors and role models, demonstrating trust (rather than talking about it), creating an environment that encourages collaboration, using technology to break barriers and sourcing innovation openly.”
Read more in Take The Lead on women in blockchain
Creating leaders beginning with the pipeline is one solution. According to Techopedia, “A handful of universities and colleges that included Harvard, Manchester Community College, Harvey Mudd College, and Loyola University Chicago launched WiSTEM (Women’s Inclusion in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics). WiSTEM aims to familiarize women with the challenges and opportunities faced by women entrepreneurs. It offers mentorship by top male and female business leaders and connects participants to leading venture companies.”
Read more in Take The Lead on women in STEM education
For Equal Pay Day, the good news is the pay gap is actually smaller for tech than it is for other sectors.
“For #EqualPayDay, the good news is the pay gap is actually smaller for tech than it is for other sectors. #WomeninTech”
Techopedia shows, “reports, such as these by Glassdoor and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, suggest this pattern will continue. That’s partly thanks to companies such as Intel and Salesforce that make concerted efforts to bridge the gap.”
As Women in Tech notes: “With women with less than two years of experience better at negotiating pay than their male coworkers and a continuing skills shortage in the tech sector, it seems that the only way is up for rates of pay for female techies.”
In its new 2020 report, Payscale suggests specific salary policies to make pay equitable. “Do stick to salary ranges you’ve established when you make new hires and make pay increase decisions. Do not ask candidates about their salary history. Using prior salary to make pay decisions can perpetuate lower pay for those who were underpaid in their previous roles. Instead, price each job according to the market value of the role and pay each person according to the market rate. Do monitor for internal pay equity each time you go through a pay increase cycle or make a change to someone’s pay.”
“In its new 2020 report, @Payscale suggests specific salary policies to make pay equitable. #EqualPayDay”
And Take The Lead is available to help women in tech and all sectors to close the wage gap and to assume roles of leadership.
“@Takeleadwomen is available to help #WomenInTech and all sectors to close the #wagegap and to assume roles of #leadership. ”
“Take The Lead has been doing virtual training since we began in 2014,” says Feldt.
“We are going to re-launch our 9 Leadership Power Tools to Accelerate Your Career online course shortly so that women can have access to it even if they can’t get to a physical classroom. We are also planning to launch a self-study course called Power TO Lead and our bold goal is to reach 10,000 women with that course in the next year to help early career, especially diverse entrepreneurial women, advance.”
She adds, “We can deliver programs virtually to companies in any industry. We have the curriculum and we are ready to help.”
Making sure everyone is paid fairly is a goal, and aligns with the Take The Lead mission of reaching gender parity across all sectors of leadership by 2025.
