Something genius came out of the celebration of International Women’s Day last March 8. Employers that posted a statement on Twitter to mark that day got a response calling out those that underpay women.
“Stop posting platitudes. Start fixing the problem.” This was the slogan of the Gender Pay Gap Bot account on Twitter that said, “Employers, if you tweet about International Women’s Day, I’ll retweet your gender pay gap.” The bot (robot or automated response) reacted to posts that used the hashtags “#IWD2022” and “#BreakTheBias.”
The gender pay gap refers to the difference between the salaries of men and women in an organization or company, showing mostly how women are being underpaid. The bot revealed the difference in percentages.
“In this organization, women’s mean hourly pay is 63.9 percent lower than men’s.” This was the bot’s response to the tweet by a company that said it was “celebrating the journey to womanhood.”
“In this organization, women’s median hourly pay is 11.1 percent lower than men’s,” the bot replied to a college’s post that promoted their equality and diversity event.
Some of those shamed by the bot later deleted their original posts.
In some cases, the percentage of disparity is smaller, and in others, the bot said it was equal. “In this organization, women’s median hourly pay is 0.4 percent lower than men’s.” “In this organization, men’s and women’s median hourly pay is equal.”
It was not clear how the bot’s makers accessed the information on salaries paid by companies but it must have come from a publicly available government database on salary levels. The bot’s targets included schools, non-government organizations, a bank, the police, and other government offices that are located in the United Kingdom. There was none from the Philippines.
One example was the tweet of the Newman University in Birmingham in the UK on “celebrating the achievements of women everywhere today.” The bot retweeted it with the message, “In this organization, women’s median hourly pay is 18.6 percent lower than men’s.” The university deleted the tweet, then later reposted it without the “#IWD2022” hashtag.
People greet each other every March 8 in celebration of the role women play in the family, in business, the community, and society. The declaration of the special day by the United Nations is meant to recognize the achievements of women in the social, economic, cultural, and political spheres and to issue a call to action for gender balance, which means equal access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
The bot’s makers used the celebration of International Women’s Day to call out companies who are not true to their pronouncements of empowering women.
It was a good way to use technology and social media to promote gender balance in the workplace and call out insincere declarations.