While the nature of the modern developed society implies equality for people of all genders, cultures, races, religions, and sexual orientations, the issue of the pay gap between men and women remains a topic of heated debates. According to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (2014), the majority of current organizations will have a gender pay gap of like-for-like, by-level, or organization-wide forms.
Nowadays, many companies try to achieve pay transparency to account for payment equality in the workplace. Let’s explore the example of Amazon, a global corporation specializing in e-commerce and employing 230,800 workers worldwide. Arjuna Capital forced the company’s management to conduct an analysis of its payment policies and disclose the results to the public. It was concluded that women made 99.9 cents for each dollar earned by men in the same positions, showing that the gender pay gap was not an issue for the company (Segar, 2016). Therefore, Amazon’s newly-introduced payment transparency policy helped the company reinforce its equal treatment to employees and become an example for other corporations. According to Ireland (2016), pay secrecy can encourage employees to make biased decisions about employees’ payment. Thus, Amazon’s attempt to disclose its payment policies by gender will make the company follow its promises and improve under the ‘public eye.’
Current equal payment campaigns such as the “daughter water”, introduced in Australia, encourage companies to initiate their payment analyses, making sure that all employees get equal treatment (Gaze, 2014). It can be stated that Amazon is currently leading the move towards equal pay for all genders and cultures, which is an excellent example for other corporations to follow. However, seeking gender pay equity should not compromise employees’ performance because it is unfair to pay either men or women more if they work fewer hours in their positions (for example, women taking maternity leaves).
References
Gaze, B. (2014). Drinking ‘daughter water’ won’t be enough to deliver pay equity. Web.
Ireland, J. (2016). Calls for Parliament to remove pay secrecy to close gender gap. Web.
Segar, M. (2016). Amazon says its female workers paid equally as men. Web.
Workplace Gender Equality Agency. (2014). Explaining the gender pay gap. Web.