Emerging Media Moguls Create Equal Pay
Contributor for Mashable wrote a story announcing that “Women at Microsoft now earn 99.8 cents on average for every dollar their male counterparts make and Apple CEO Tim Cook informed shareholders that its female employees in the U.S. earned 99.6 cents for every dollar earned by their male peers” (Fiegerman, 2016).
Fiegerman continued on to say, “This is a shining statistic for technology companies that have been very publicly struggling to improve their internal diversity numbers and prove they are more than communities of white men.”
However, despite this wonderful news, Hope King at CNN writes, “A recent study shows that the pay disparity between men and women seems to be worsening in the United States. The country now ranks 74th in wage equality among 145 countries, down from 65th place in 2014, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender report. The gap between men and women’s earnings widened to 64% from 66%” (King, 2016).
Facebook and Microsoft pave the way within their brands, which could empower others to do the same. So how do we increase the momentum they started?
Nicole
References
King, H. (2016, April). Facebook, Microsoft say they pay women, men equally. Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/11/technology/facebook-microsoft-equal-pay/
Fiegerman, S. (2016, April). Facebook and Microsoft say they’ve eliminated the gender pay gap. Retrieved April 11, 2016, from http://mashable.com/2016/04/11/facebook-microsoft-gender-pay-gap/#Vx.gj4nCbkqx
nicolesleechiavone 
Hi Nicole!
Thank you for bringing to the forefront an important issue facing women! It’s so frustrating to see. Many people don’t understand that the wage gap isn’t caused by employers paying men and women different amounts for the same job, but by lack of opportunity and cultural pressure on women to do ‘women jobs’, which normally pay a lot less than jobs traditionally held by men.
One of the things I want to do when I graduate grad school is write a grant and start a program for rural women in my area to receive free coding training, both for web and software development. It’s one small part I can do in order to help women achieve equality. Of course, this only works if technology companies remove arbitrary experience requirements, which often disqualify women who have been helped by these programs.
What are some ways you think we can work to close the gender pay gap in other industries?
Have a great week,
Teresa
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The idea that a person is paid differently due to sex is appalling. I am glad some companies are making strides to correct that, but to me legislation needs to be passed to eliminate this horrible practice.
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