Parity affects all women in the workplace. Because this is such a crucial and all-encompassing issue, our initiative is broken into two subgroups: pay parity and gender parity. This brief provides an overview of why both issues are a passionate focus for WBC.
Why focus on pay parity?
- In 2020, women earn $0.81 for every dollar earned by men when the median salary for all men and women is considered regardless of job type or worker seniority, representing a 2% improvement from 2019 and a 7% improvement from 2015 (Payscale Gender Pay Gap Report for 2020)
- In 2020, women earn $0.98 for every dollar earned by men with the same employment characteristics, i.e., similar jobs. Referred to as the controlled gender pay gap it did not change from 2019 and has shrunk by $.01 since 2015 (Payscale Gender Pay Gap Report for 2020)
- The pay gap widens as women progress through their career with women making $0.95 to ever dollar a man makes when data are controlled, and make $0.69 to every dollar a man makes when data are not controlled. This is a $0.01 improvement from 2019 in the uncontrolled group and no change in the controlled group. (Payscale Gender Pay Gap Report for 2020)
- Women of color have a higher gender pay gap
- The largest uncontrolled pay gap is for American Indian and Alaska Native women, Black and Hispanic women. These women earn $.075 for every dollar a white man earns, which improved by $0.01 from 2019
- Asian women earn $.095 for every dollar a white man earns when data are not controlled for all compensable factors, which improved by $0.02 from 2019
- Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women made $.80 for every dollar a man made, $0.01 higher than in 2019
- Small and mid-size businesses (SMB’s) have a gender wage gap that exceeds the national average – female SMB employees make 66 cents for every dollar paid to men owing largely to a lack of transparency around compensation practices (Zenefits, Fair Pay Report 2018)
Why focus on gender parity?
- According to Bloomberg’s 2020 GEI highlights, women represent 43% of the total workforce in the U.S. and:
- 4% of new hires
- 37% of middle management
- 27% of senior management
- 19% of executives
- 6% of CEOs
- 28% of corporate board seats
- 44% of promotions
- 28% of top 10% compensated employees
- For every 100 men offered their first career promotion only 72 women move up; Black and Latinx women have it the hardest; they’re promoted at just 58% and 68% the rate of men respectively (McKinsey/Lean In Women at Work, 2019)
- Women want gender parity and men are satisfied with gender representation. When one in three managers at a company is a woman, slightly more than half of women but 62% of men say they are well represented. When 10% of a company’s senior executives are women, 44% of men but only 22% of women say that’s enough. (McKinsey/Lean In Women at Work, 2019)
- WMRI research on the Gender Gap at the Top identifies large disparities in women’s access to the line management roles that lead to leadership in the C-Suite.
- Nearly half (49%) of women would leave a job if they learned a male counterpart was making 25% more money (Randstad U.S., Women in the Workplace Report, 2019)
- A McKinsey study found that companies in the top-quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 21% more likely to outperform on profitability
- Companies in the 2020 MSCI World Index with strong women leadership generated a Return on Equity of 10.1% per year vs 7.4% for those without strong women leadership
Our Goals
So what can we do? We’ve partnered with an incredible group of organizations to drive change: Culture@Work; Gender Fair; National Association for Female Executives (NAFE); Paradigm for Parity; Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index.
Together, we plan to work to endorse and promote Paradigm for Parity® Coalition’s Action Plan, amplify the stark facts around parity and promote change through creating guidelines that companies can adapt to their analytic and reporting processes in support of the achievement of pay parity, celebrate and amplify the work of companies and leaders driving greater parity, and more.
We believe that through these actions we can see:
- Full gender parity in the C-Suite by 2030
- 25% of all new females in the C-Suite are women of color by 2025
- Pay parity in the C-Suite by 2030
- Full “controlled” pay parity for all women in the Russell 3000 by 2025
- Private SMBs (Small and Medium Sized Businesses) to achieve full “controlled” pay parity by 2030
