How Did This Bot Celebrate International Women’s Day? Companies Called Out For Gender Pay Gap

A bot developed last year during Women’s History Month did something a little different this year, calling out companies who posted for International Women’s Day on Tuesday but still have a gender pay gap.

The bot, @PayGapApp, relies on data from a U.K. government website to evaluate whether a company pays its employees differently based on their gender.

“Employers, if you tweet about International Women's Day, I'll retweet your gender pay gap,” the bot warns, and yet many companies fall for it. Each tweet writes out the same message: "in this organisation, women's median hourly pay is _% lower [or higher] than men's."

In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 10% lower than men's. https://t.co/hbrCUOcSoM
Gender Pay Gap Bot (@PayGapApp) March 9, 2022

Many companies even deleted their tweets shortly after being quote-tweeted by the bot, revealing their gender pay gap. On Wednesday the bot is still calling out companies for using International Women’s Day to highlight their employees who are women while not paying them equally.

So far, the account has 204,000 followers and 2,811 tweets. Account creators Francesca Lawson, 27, and Ali Fensome, 27, told the Washington Post that on Tuesday morning the account only had 2,000 followers.

“You can’t say that you’re doing really well for equality if you’ve not got the numbers behind you to support it,” Lawson told The Post, referring to companies spotlighting women at the company while still not paying them the same as they pay men at the company, or giving them equal opportunities.

The account has called out everyone from colleges, police officers, companies, government institutions and healthcare, etc. As of 2020, on average, women are paid .83 cents per every dollar that men make according to The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), which can fluctuate depending on industry and the make-up of higher-ups at a company. When taking race into account, Black, Latina, Native American, and Asian women make even less than their white counterparts.

COVID-19 has a huge impact on more recent gaps in pay and employment, with 1.1 fewer women in the labor force in Feb. 2022 than in Feb. 2020, “neither working nor looking for work,” according to the NWLC.