Ahead of today’s Equal Pay Day, Facebook and Microsoft have disclosed that there is no discrepancy in how much their male and female employees are paid.
The social media giant and Redmond-based Windows maker had been among nine leading tech companies, including Apple and Amazon, under pressure from the boutique investment firm Arjuna Capital. The company, based near Boston, had filed shareholder proposals at each of these tech titans, seeking the release of salary data and closure of the gender wage gap.
“If tech companies want to attract and retain the best talent and are going to move women into leadership roles that will make the companies more competitive, they need to pay men and women the same, and they need to be transparent about how they are doing that,” Natasha Lamb, a partner at Arjuna Capital, has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal as insisting.
Equal Pay Day falls on this day, as it indicates how far into the year women must work in order to reach the same pay earned by men in the previous year. Despite the new revelations from Facebook and Microsoft, research indicates that the tech industry continues to see a gender pay gap; at major corporations, it is 7%, says a new survey by career marketplace startup Hired Inc.
