I'm the founder and CEO of
Pipeline™
I was giving an interview for a "game-changing women" radio show a few years ago. The topic was negotiation and pay and the host asked me,..."
"Will we close the gender pay gap in
our lifetime?"
The question holds merit.
Hundreds of business leaders have made commitments to increase intersectional gender equity in their organizations. In fact, 78% of CEOs list intersectional gender equity as a top-ten business priority. And yet, only 22% of employees say that gender diversity is regularly measured and shared within their workplaces. That’s a problem.
And it’s a problem that decades of initiatives have done little to fix. In fact, the aggregate gender pay gap widened between 2010 and 2018. Today, women earn 82 cents for every dollar men earn. Eighteen cents may not seem like a significant sum of money, but it adds up to $10,122 in lost wages on average, every year, per woman.
So what’s stalling progress? It’s complicated. For businesses to truly close their gender pay gaps (and keep them closed), they must go beyond pay. They must also close gender gaps in how they hire, how they evaluate performance, how they evaluate potential, and how they promote. Closing these gaps lays the foundation for sustainable intersectional gender equity (including pay equity) to flourish.
Consider this scenario:
Every year, companies make three key decisions about their talent.
1.
2.
3.
How will we pay them?
How will we evaluate their performance?
And how will we evaluate their potential?
Now, consider this:
There are 30 million employees in the Fortune 500. That’s 90 million opportunities every year to move either further from or closer to intersectional gender equity. How do you ensure that every one of those decisions is an equitable one? And remember, those 90 million opportunities don’t take into account the need for equitable hiring and promotion practices.
A pledge or commitment is a good first step toward intersectional gender equity, but it won’t close the gap. Companies need a holistic, data-driven approach to achieve intersectional gender equity. And they need a business case to make it happen.
That’s why I founded Pipeline™, an award-winning SaaS company that uses artificial intelligence to identify and drive financial gains through gender equity. With Pipeline™, companies are no longer shooting in the dark when it comes to intersectional gender equity. They now have the data to ensure that every talent decision made across their organizations not only brings them closer to closing the gap, but also closer to reaping the economic gains of intersectional gender equity. Pipeline’s original research across 4,161 companies in 29 countries shows that for every 10% increase in intersectional gender equity, there is a 1 to 2% increase in revenue.
Gender equity increases your organization’s profitability
Gender equity increases your sales team’s productivity
Gender equity increases your organization’s return on equity
Gender equity increases your organization’s ability to attract top talent
Gender equity increases your organization’s revenue
Gender equity increases your organization’s rate of innovation