On Women’s Equality Day, the US President, Mr. Barack Obama, committed to step up the leading businesses and influential companies to pledge themselves toward gender equality. As touted by Obama, women play an important role: ” At every level of society, women are leaders at forefront of progress.”
At the United States of Women Summit on 14th June 2016, the President announced a new equal play pledge to rededicate ourselves to the challenges regarding gender equality. The announcement came with an aim to eradicate gender discrimination and ensure all male and female employees receive equal pay for work of equal value and will be afforded equal opportunities regardless of their sex, gender, marital status, or pregnancy. This equal pay pledge is signed by over 28 major companies committed to closing the gender pay gap. As announced by White House Today Facebook, Apple, IBM and Microsoft signed the pay pledge raising the signatories over 57.
“The Employers for Pay Equity consortium is comprised of companies that understand the importance of diversity and inclusion, including ensuring that all individuals are compensated equitably for equal work and experience and have an equal opportunity to contribute and advance in the workplace. We are committed to collaborating to eliminate the national pay and leadership gaps for women and ethnic minorities. Toward that end, we have come together to share best practices in compensation, hiring, promotion, and career development as well as develop strategies to support other companies’ efforts in this regard. By doing so, we believe we can have a positive effect on our workforces that, in turn, makes our companies stronger and delivers positive economic impact.”
At this moment, women face a huge discrimination in terms of pay package – an average woman still earns only 79 cents for every dollar a male counterpart in the US. The pay structure becomes more pathetic to 64 cents for African American women, 59 cents for Native American women, and 54 cents for Latinas.
The paycheck aiming to improve the lives of women, an independent group of White House Equal Pay Pledge employers formed a business consortium, Employers for Pay Equity– to help the industries to increase their hiring and promotion processes as well. These consortium members include major industry giants like Accenture, Cisco, Expedia, Airbnb, EY, L’Oreal USA, PepsiCo, Visa, and many more.
On the anniversary of the 19th amendment the President recapped the strengths, goals and called for action the leading businesses to review hiring and promotion practices.
