The Price of Paying Women in Workplace Platitudes vs. Equitable Pay
On International Women’s Day 2022, employers are wise to finally give women pay equity — not empty praise.
Women at war
Today is International Women’s Day. Cue confetti?
If we’re talking about women internationally today, we should spend it talking about one group of women —the heroic women of Ukraine.
(And of Russia, where civilians and reporters of all gender identities have taken to the streets to protest Putin’s campaign of deception and death to their Slavic brothers and sisters, knowingly risking imprisonment or death.)
The women of Ukraine have picked up guns. In fact, they’ve become a vital part of the nation’s defense since 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea. Today, they’re sheltering with their children and parents in subways or fleeing the country. They’re running out of food.
To say I’d be enraged and terrified does not do their human experience justice. I cannot fathom their emotional experiences.
They’re fighting a part of the war invading their homeland as much as the Ukrainian military that has been formally trained for combat. “I planned to plant tulips and daffodils on my backyard today. Instead, I learn to fire arms and get ready for the next night of attacks on Kyiv,” tweeted Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian member of parliament.
But women like Kira aren’t who we’re talking about today on International Women’s Day.
Instead, my timelines are filled by employers across the US gleefully posting “Happy International Women’s Day!” with colorful banners and caricaturized representations of female team members.
These posts are not cutting it — not anymore. “We appreciate you!” social media posts are not payment. They’re insulting platitudes. Women in the US workplace are over the charade, over being infantilized at the same moment women across the world are bravely becoming para-infantry overnight.
We’re speaking up, organizing, quitting underpaying jobs in record numbers. The world over, women are literally taking to the streets to protest for the right to live.
Pandemic inequity
After two full years of exhausting isolation, sickness, and death (psychosocial stressors in the pandemic were greater for women); after a lifetime of being undervalued within the home and by managers; after centuries of economic disenfranchisement (Latina employees are demanding more); after decades of sexism disguised as progress toward true equality, women are over niceties.
In the last two years, women have seen exactly where they stand in their own homes. Countless women assumed full-time childcare, teaching responsibilities, and career — simultaneously — while their partners, well, didn’t. They couldn’t do less. Who would pick up the slack? It shouldn’t be any surprise the women who experienced this are absolutely exhausted emotionally and physically.
If you were in their shoes, wouldn’t you feel like you had nothing to lose by sticking up for yourself and demanding more of your unpaid and underpaid labor?
Women in the US workplace are over the charade, over being infantilized at the same moment women across the world are bravely becoming para-infantry overnight.
To my own great surprise, TikTok is a groundswell of women voicing palpable frustrations about status quo.
That’s on racism in America, labor rights, women’s health issues, political representation, the role of science in the modern world, child care policy. You name it, TikTok has a shockingly informed group of people popping onto my FYP to discuss and influence a range of civic issues.
And salary is one of the hottest topics of 2022.
In particular, pay equity for women is a topic du jure, although Dr. Kellie McElhaney has been talking about this since 2020 — before the pandemic turned daily life and corporate culture upside down. She pointed out then that in the lead-up to 2020, only about 1 in 5 (22%) of the largest public US companies performed a salary audit. Perhaps that’s because asking difficult questions yields difficult-to-swallow data.
“It’s the fear that they are going to find a problem and have to fix it. But isn’t that how you manage a business effectively?” she asked.
Apparently not.
Many companies are struggling to stay out of lawsuits related to salary, in spite of aggressive new pay equity laws that eclipse even the federal Equal Pay Act. International corporations including Uber, Google and Nike have settled gender pay discrimination cases for tens of millions of dollars. You’d think “don’t get sued” is a reasonable minimum. And yet, although laws in 2018 stiffened reporting requirements for pay equity, companies are chugging along with business as usual and wondering why employees are making radically different decisions than they did before COVID-19.
These same companies are floundering in their response to the choppy new currents in the free market ocean. It’s almost like companies don’t understand how wildly expensive employee turnover is; how much people now value working from home; and how much leverage labor has in the market.
We now find ourselves in what’s almost humorously become a “F*ck around and find out” segment of the Great Resignation. It’s sort of like a magic show in which Tweetivism and Starbucks cards convert from disingenuous nonsense into a real currency — anger.
Burnout and poor pay are the drivers for this mass labor turnover. This workforce will not accept pizza parties as payment.
Weaponizing confusion in like-work salary comparisons
While many companies don’t have clean data to immediately begin an equity analysis, that’s an excuse that won’t fly in the white-hot 2022 job market. In December 2021, well over 50,000 people contributed to a Google Sheet started in this viral TikTok post to share their salary data.
That’s relevant for two reasons.
First, it shows it’s far from impossible to identify relevant data. HR could run a report in 30 minutes that probably provides over 50% of the information needed to begin a robust like-work pay evaluation. From there, perhaps individual department managers would need to review the skills and work performed by the people on their team. That’s workable. Hiring a specialist consulting firm is another option.
Second, crowd-sourcing detailed compensation data is antithetical to the ways employer policies have enveloped salary data in a musty cloud of misogynist mystery. Information is power. And, when tens of thousands of strangers on the internet start talking about salary, contextualizing ones own earning power is less threatening. Anyway, HR is also having a tricky time monitoring chitchat about bonus values on an app they probably still think is just for teenagers learning dance trends.
For decades, keeping salary discussions private has been regarded as a social contract closely related to politeness. But, at the risk of being rude, peers who did discuss their wages had far more negotiation leverage. Thus, the rise of tools like Glassdoor and other crowdsourced information — particularly when minority identities are included, such as gender and race — shifts the balance of power toward employees.
Data, while certainly susceptible to manipulation and misrepresentation, is a useful tool in equalizing pay. Not that data on the pay gap is new. (It isn’t — even if misinformed people on the internet do still argue it “isn’t real.”) In salary negotiation, data is more important than ever for candidates. In many states, it is now illegal for employers to ask candidates what their current salary is; this also shifts informational power toward workers.
State and federal laws have evolved slowly over many decades. This shift in the market happened quickly. Employers may be misguided in assuming it will go away just as quickly.
Where that is the case, employers can obfuscate data at their own peril — something their nose to spite their face. Setting aside that I can’t remember how that idiom goes, employers will learn sooner or later that acting sus in interviews about salary isn’t in their best interest.
It’s an immediate hiccup in hiring. And, for especially competitive candidates, a red flag that will send them skipping. In retention, employers would be especially smart to run the pay equity analysis that’s surely overdue, adjust salaries across the company, and make public accountability plan for maintaining transparency.
Initiatives like this have paid off in the past at large employers, including Adobe. In 2018, they achieved pay equity internally. Salesforce did the same. It’s not entirely a coincidence that employee satisfaction at Salesforce is among the highest in the entire tech industry.
Employees are starting to ask for more data transparency and you’d better be ready to answer those questions. Attrition rates, promotion trends, COLA raise histories, and equity analyses across all levels of the company. And employees shouldn’t take an employer’s word for it that they’re “equitable.” Culture matters to your company? That’s cute. You damn well better be measuring it. We want receipts.
Research shows organizations that emphasize meritocracy as a core value are worse when it comes to pay equity, not better! As it turns out, this cultural mythology of merit encourages employees to assume pay is refereed fairly. Consequently, even if leadership within these organizations behave in good faith, they problematically do not scrutinize or monitor behavior.
Company culture is only culture if it exists in replicable, scalable, and measurable policies. If it’s completely subjective, or the product of someone’s wishful thinking, there is nothing social or concrete about it.
Culture is interpersonal.
Culture is not an ideological manifesto of what leaders wish their company was, nor how they’d like for it to be perceived.
That’s image.
That’s reputation — not culture.
The price of platitudes
Leadership may not ask tough questions. Employees always will. And dirty data won’t save organizations from the wrath of the most competitive labor market in decades.
Women are warriors in the most literal sense around the world. Women are also known to be the primary consumer spending decision-makers in the US. Women are the most educated group in US history. Women can hire employment law attorneys.
The list of reasons it is smart business to compensate women fairly can be reduced to its essence — underpaying women is a swift and violent path to eroding corporate competitiveness and brand trust.
That’s why employers would be wise to spend today — or, all of International Women’s Month! — doing less platitude posting and more pay equity auditing (PEA). Dr. McElhaney says it’s the best way for company leaders and boards to ensure their org is paying employees fairly. And when a women is an expert in her field like Dr. McElhaney, we value her point of view. Right?
Platitude Red Flags
Wondering if you might be setting off alarm bells when employees start asking about equitable pay? Here’s are a few sure signs you are signaling you’ll pay women in platitudes instead of the equitable salary they deserve.
🚩 “We hire the best person for the job.”
📢 Translation
We assume our candidate pool is inclusive of all competitive applicants and have no recruiting pipeline diversification strategy. We do not fully understand US historical prejudices and their legacy in hiring today.
🚩 “We don’t have to worry about microaggressions in our workplace because we hire ‘nice’ people.”
📢 Translation
We believe racist behavior is monolithic. We also believe only outwardly obviously evil people create hostile work environments by harassing, bullying, or threatening others in the workplace.
🚩 “Employee referrals are our best hiring channel.”
📢 Translation
We are most comfortable keeping a mono-culture of people who look, think, and behave similarly rather than critically evaluate how diversifying our workplace culture can add value.
