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Elaine McCallig
Mar 08, 2022
The History of International Women's Day
The Independent
If you’ve been on Twitter today, you’ll no doubt have noticed a barrage of International Women’s Days posts.
But do all of the businesses tweeting about International Women’s Day actually pay their female employees equally?
A Twitter account with an avatar of a little grey robot with a floral hat has the answer.
This morning, the Gender Pay Gap Bot has been holding companies who are tweeting about International Women’s Day to account by revealing their pay gap statistics.
The bot’s bio reads: “Employers, if you tweet about International Women's Day, I'll retweet your gender pay gap”.
The account’s cover photo includes the message: “Deeds not words. Stop posting platitudes. Start fixing the problem.”
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Earlier today, the bot retweeted some household names and shared some surprising statistics.
This included clothing companies, hospitality brands, banks, NHS trusts, and more:
In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 40% lower than men's.https://twitter.com/Missguided/status/1501135683435610114\u00a0\u2026— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@Gender Pay Gap Bot) 1646736130
In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 73.2% lower than men's.https://twitter.com/YoungsPubs/status/1501149454853885953\u00a0\u2026— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@Gender Pay Gap Bot) 1646737500
In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 8% lower than men's.https://twitter.com/bbcstudios/status/1501146379598675970\u00a0\u2026— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@Gender Pay Gap Bot) 1646736786
In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 23.9% lower than men's.https://twitter.com/Colt_Technology/status/1501147221286338561\u00a0\u2026— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@Gender Pay Gap Bot) 1646736967
In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 34.5% lower than men's.https://twitter.com/Barclays/status/1501131005209772032\u00a0\u2026— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@Gender Pay Gap Bot) 1646733101
It also showed that some companies actually pay women more than their male counterparts:
In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 2.7% higher than men's.https://twitter.com/LondonFire/status/1501151570339241988\u00a0\u2026— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@Gender Pay Gap Bot) 1646738103
It also highlighted that some organisations paid male and female workers equally.
Some companies have been deleting their posts if they have been targeted by the busy bot.
And it’s fair to say that Twitter is loving the chaos:
The @PayGapApp is an absolute genius idea. I\u2019m looking at the feed before the companies it is quote tweeting delete their original tweet.— Scott Bryan (@Scott Bryan) 1646738836
Today's #IWD2022 amusement - watching companies scramble to delete their fluffy IWD Tweets after @PayGapApp re-tweets them - but with their gender pay-gap stats attached. I deeply salute whoever thought of this. It's deadly genius.— Caitlin Moran (@Caitlin Moran) 1646736808
Social media editors right now watching the @PayGapApp winning Twitter #InternationalWomensDaypic.twitter.com/B3rewCY8ak— Simon Doherty (@Simon Doherty) 1646741393
In the bio, the creator has also shared a link to a portal through which members of the public can search and compare gender gap data.
The results show the pay gap data for employers with over 250 employees, although smaller companies can voluntarily report their gender pay gap information.
The data is broken down into the pay gap based on median hourly pay, the percentage of women in the highest to lowest paying jobs, and a bonus pay gap.
Search up your own employer by visiting the government’s gender pay gap portal.
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