Employers are hastily deleting their tweets about International Women’s Day after being called out for their gender pay gaps by a Twitter account.
Calling for “deeds not words”, the account – named Gender Pay Gap Bot – is indiscriminately holding companies across the UK to account this International Women’s Day by sharing their publicly available gender pay gap figures, which measure women’s median hourly pay compared to men’s.
“Employers, if you tweet about International Women’s Day, I’ll retweet your gender pay gap,” the account warns in its bio, demanding that we all “stop posting platitudes. Start fixing the problem.”
The UK’s gender pay gap increased during the pandemic to 15.5 per cent. The Labour Party has predicted that if levels of pay continue at current rates, the gap won’t be closed until 2059.
Some companies with the greatest gender pay gaps to be highlighted by the bot are: Young’s Pubs, where women’s median hourly is pay is 73.2 per cent less than men’s, fast fashion brand Missguided where women are paid 40 per cent less, and Barclays bank which has a gap of 34.5 per cent.
Young’s Pubs says that due to the furlough scheme brought in over the pandemic, their gender pay gap was “significantly distorted” as just 40 of the pub chain’s 4,600 regular employees were counted as staff. Adjusted for furlough, Young’s says that its median gender pay gap is 5.6 per cent.