Equal Pay Day: Facebook, Microsoft eradicate gender pay gap

Facebook and Microsoft are taking measures to eliminate gender pay gap in their companies. A day ahead of the Equal Pay Day, Facebook announced on Monday that it has completely eliminated the pay gap between employees, while Microsoft is taking a step closer to fully eradicating the inequality.

The social media giant said it has achieved full gender pay equality among its employees. Facebook employs 68 percent men and 32 percent women, according to its diversity report in 2015. Its senior leadership ratio is 77 percent men and 23 percent women.

“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,” Lori Matloff Goler, Facebook’s VP of people, wrote.

She admitted that there is still work to be done to achieve full equality, 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.”

She was referring to the Equal Pay Day, celebrated April 12, an annual event that aims to raise awareness of pay inequality between men and women working similar jobs. A recent study on gender pay gap revealed that women in the US earn 75.9 US cents for every dollar men earn. In the I.T. industry particularly, men are paid 5.9 percent higher than women, according to Glassdoor Economic Research.

Gender pay gap is real: Study shows differences between men and women’s salaries in Australia, UK, US, France and Germany

Like Facebook, Microsoft also aims to eliminate the gap, though it isn’t completely there yet. Kathleen Hogan, executive VP for Human Resources, announced on Monday that US female employees of the multinational tech company earn 99.8 US cents for every US$1 earned by the male employees at the same job title and level.

The figure is a step up from a year and a half ago when its female workers in the US earned 99.7 US cents for every US$1 the men earned.

Microsoft also achieved equal or almost equal pay for all its US employees in terms of their racial and ethnic backgrounds. Racial and ethnic minorities combined earned US$1.004 for every US$1 earned by their Caucasian counterparts. To be more specific, for every US$1 Caucasian employees of the same job title and level earn, African American employees earn US$1.003, Hispanic/Latino employees earn 99.9 US cents, and Asian employees earn US$1.006.

“These numbers reflect our commitment to equal pay for equal work, and I’m encouraged by these results,” Hogan wrote on Microsoft blog. “We will continue our commitment to equal pay by monitoring this data and publicly disclosing it as part of our annual public diversity and inclusion information and data reporting. We will also continue work to ensure that all of our employees have equal opportunity.”