What a way to kick off Equal Pay Day with the news that not one, but two major companies have eliminated the wage gap between men and women. The gap, which currently stands at women earning 80p for every £1 earned by a man within the same role, is slowly being abolished and it's about time.
Facebook were the first to break the news, announcing it on Monday that they have achieved full gender pay equality within their employees. With Lori Matloff Goler, Vice President of people at Facebook announcing in a post 'I’m proud to share that at Facebook, men and women earn the same.' Facebook deserve a massive pat on the back for this one.
Microsoft quickly followed suit, revealing that they had almost completely eliminated the pay gap. According to their blog, women at the company now earn 99.8 cents on average for every dollar their male counterparts make. While it's not up there with Facebook's news, it's still a great news.
This doesn’t completely abolish the whole gender pay gap, with reports from the Women and Equalities select committees stating that the 19.2% gap between what men and women earn has hardly improved over the last four years but it’s still an incredible achievement and the start to a new (we hope) way of pay. So, here's to more companies doing what Facebook and Microsoft have done, knocking down that pay wall and stopping women from being held back.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.