- Twitter account @paygapapp reveals gender pay gap of companies that wish women on International Women’s Day.
- Bot exposes hypocrisy of organisations by accessing British government data.
- The software has shown that majority of the companies have a major pay gap.
A Twitter bot exposes the gender pay gap of UK-based organizations that wish their female employees International Women’s Day on social media, CNET reported.
The bio of the account @paygapapp says “Employers, if you tweet about International Women’s Day, I’ll retweet your gender pay gap” and they fulfil their promise.
After the 2017 mandate in the UK, companies with 250 or more employees are required to publicise the salaries of both genders. The software automatically accesses the British government data and then posts that information on their public Twitter account, which currently has 174.5k followers.
It has become a trend for companies to use an empowering vocabulary on their social media and post about women’s equal rights and their empowerment. The founders of the bot — software developer Ali Fensome and copywriter Francesca Lawson — wondered whether wishing women on International Women’s Day and celebrating online was enough without taking practical steps towards women’s empowerment.
While Twitter accounts of these companies show posts where women are smiling and are seemingly happy with their “empowerment”, the bot has revealed that the majority of the companies have a stark pay gap.
With access to this information, @paygapapp has exposed companies’ hypocrisy and has called out multiple organisations. About Daily Express, for example, the account recently revealed that women’s median hourly pay there was 22.5% lower than that of men.
Per the publication, the bot is not biased and ensures accuracy. It tweeted, for instance, about Abbeycroft Leisure: “In this organisation, men’s and women’s median hourly pay is equal.”
The software is objective and does not differentiate between profit and non-profit companies.
As a result, some companies ended up deleting their posts. Lawson commented over e-mail and said: “I think it’s pretty cowardly to delete the tweet after being called out — it gives off the impression that … they’d rather pretend it doesn’t exist than … do something about it.”
