Today - April 12th - is known as Equal Pay Day, is the day in which, on average, a woman would have to work until in order to make the same amount of money a man would make by December 31st.
Across an average year, a man works 365 days for his wage, and a woman would need to work an additional 102 days to make that same amount.
So today was the perfect day for Facebook to announce that it had completely eliminated the gender wage gap within their business, with Vice President of people at Facebook, Lori Matloff Goler, taking to the social media platform to make the following statement:
"We regularly review our compensation practices to ensure pay equity, and have done so for many years. We complete thorough statistical analyses to compare the compensation of men and women performing similar work. I'm proud to share that at Facebook, men and women earn the same. At Facebook we value those who bring varying perspectives, for many reasons including background, community, culture, race, ethnicity - and gender. We call this cognitive diversity, and we want more of it. It propels our mission: to make the world more open and connected. There’s always more work to be done, of course. But we’re proud to be a leader in pay equality, and look forward to a time when we don’t even need to call it out."
Similarly, VP of Human Resources at Microsoft, Kathleen Hogan, declared on a new blog entry that the gender wage gap within her company was miniscule, while pay differences based on race painted an even more positive picture:
"Today, for every $1 earned by men, our female employees in the U.S. earn 99.8 cents at the same job title and level. Racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. combined earn $1.004 for every $1 earned by their Caucasian counterparts. Breaking it down even further, African American/black employees are at $1.003; Hispanic/Latino(a) employees are at 99.9 cents; and Asian employees are at $1.006 for every $1 earned by Caucasian employees at the same job title and level, respectively. These numbers reflect our commitment to equal pay for equal work, and I’m encouraged by these results."
This follows fast on the heels of Intel confirming that the male to female payment ratio is 1:1, while Apple CEO Tim told the company's shareholders its female employees in the U.S. earned 99.6 cents for every dollar earned by their male peers.
