{"id":1320,"date":"2017-09-25T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T12:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2017-09-25T08:00:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T12:00:32","slug":"can-take-steps-close-gender-pay-gap-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/can-take-steps-close-gender-pay-gap-company\/","title":{"rendered":"How You Can Take Steps to Close the Gender Pay Gap in Your Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tResearch indicates that pay transparency does result in smaller pay gaps.<\/a> At the very least, if employees are aware<\/em> of pay discrepancies in the company, women and people of color can confidently negotiate for higher salaries than those offered. But most companies keep salary information secret and are not transparent. That is why the step taken by employees at Google is so important\u2014they took matters into their own hands to create transparency.\nDaisuke Wakabayashi of the New York Times<\/em> reports that in 2015, a female engineer at Google created a self-reported salary spreadsheet<\/a> that employees are still using. In 2017, twelve hundred United States Google employees posted their salary and bonus information to this spreadsheet, which shows that female employees are paid less than male staff members in comparable jobs at most levels. The spreadsheet does not cover all levels and is admittedly incomplete. Nonetheless, since Google\u2019s board voted against making pay transparent for women\u2019s and men\u2019s salaries, and Google is in a court battle with the United States Department of Labor because it is refusing to hand over data as part of a routine audit of its pay practices, the self-reported data is the only source of transparency for Google employees. Without the spreadsheet, Google would not be held accountable at all.\nNow, more than ever, employees need to self-organize to collect salary data and make it transparent to expose pay gaps. Why? Because, as Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times<\/em> reports, the Trump administration just reversed a regulation that the Obama administration put into place to address the pay gap.<\/a> Miller explains that the Obama administration regulation, which was about to take effect, would have \u201crequired companies to report how much they paid people, along with their sex and race.\u201d Europe and Britain require companies to report this information, but now, under the Trump administration, we do not. Without this pressure from the Federal government, companies have no incentive to close the pay gaps and will continue to keep salary information secret and, accordingly, to hide discrimination and avoid accountability.\nMiller reports that, according to an analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Pew Research Center, we know the following general statistics about the pay gap in the United States:\n\n\n