Lizzie Kardon, the head of content at Pagely, started a Google spreadsheet for women in tech in January in a bid to kick off a discussion around pay for women and encourage transparency in a male-dominated industry.
“Yes, I only have 31 Twitter followers, but I just started this doc today and hundreds of #womenintech have already submitted their salary info. We are stronger together!” Ms Kardon posted in January.
But since launching on 12 January, Ms Kardon’s spreadsheet has been filled out by over 1,300 women from across the world, including Australia.
Aside from jotting down their job titles, women are disclosing their yearly salary, location, years of experience and any notable job benefits.
Scrolling through the sheet, we see that positions and salaries are wide-ranging, starting from the low $20,000 and climbing to $600,000 for a senior manager software developer in Seattle.
Speaking to NBC’s Today show, Ms Kardon said that she has discovered the average woman tech worker is being underpaid as much as $10,000 per year.
“I’ve learned that women are stronger together and willing to help each other,” Ms Kardon said.
Pace of change modest
Australia’s latest gender equality scorecard revealed late last year that men out-earn women by $25,679 on average.
While more Australian employers are taking action to promote gender equality in their organisations, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency revealed that the pace of change is modest and uneven.
“Our data shows that pay gaps favouring men persist in all industries, occupations and manager categories,” said agency director Libby Lyons at the time.
Meanwhile, ABS figures from September last year showed that just one in six Australian CEOs is a woman.
Respected business school INSEAD released research a year ago, suggesting that compulsory disclosure of gender-based pay figures is capable of reducing the pay gap by 7 per cent.
