In addition to butter scoops and cables for wireless headphones, one of the questionable things that society has produced is International Women’s Day, which is “committed” every year on March 8th. Above all, the hypocrisy that this day produces is questionable. Companies in which 90 percent of the board members are men get involved on this day with empowerment slogans with a pink background, radio stations only let women on the microphone for a day, “strong women” beam into the cameras of Swabian medium-sized companies and praise their bosses on Facebook for that they enable them to have both a child and a career. And you can always find some cosmetics manufacturer who gives a ten percent discount, because hey, you’re beautiful, no matter what you look like, but it’s always a little prettier.
So far, so normal. How entertaining hypocrisy can be, however, could be seen on Twitter this year on March 8th. There grabs the “gender pay gap bot” tweets from UK companies tagged with the hashtag #IWD2022, short for International Women’s Day, and stoically tweets their gender pay gap. In other words, what women earn in percentage per hour there compared to men. What a show.
“Strong Women, May we know them. May we be them. May we raise them” tweets a Welsh cancer foundation – gender pay gap per hour worked, added by the bot: 35.9 percent less than men. The council of Waltham Forest, near London, lights up the town hall purple and releases a playlist of songs by women artists. Gender pay gap: 9.5 percent. the Daily Express pays women 22.5 percent less per hour, but they don’t even bother with their own congratulations, instead citing the posts of celebrities, including James Middleton, who honors his sister, Duchess Kate, on International Women’s Day.
Of course women can celebrate, but do they pay right away?
Goldman Sachs releases a video, in which women (are they actually employees?) present their “super power” to department store music – curiosity, empathy, solution-oriented work. “From San Francisco to Bengaluru we are celebrating the women at Goldman Sachs who make things possible”. Gender pay gap: 36.8 percent. Really great celebration.
Some companies deleted their tweets, after the bot transferred them, some just tweeted again without the hashtag. Because of a typo, it said at one point. It’s clear.
It is not clear who programmed the bot. But it does a great job: courts, police stations, schools, care facilities, media houses, foundations – the bot gets them all and stubbornly evaluates them. And you will also find companies that pay their employees the same, regardless of gender, and those in which women even earn more than men on average. At the “Landmark Trust”, for example, an organization for the preservation of old buildings, it is 24.5 percent.
Incidentally, the situation in Germany is no better than in Great Britain, the wage difference per hour was still 18 percent on average in 2021, and with qualifications, jobs and employment histories comparable to men, it was also six percent that women earned less. Go, dear programmers!