These Businesses Are Taking The Equal Pay Pledge

Today, women make up nearly half of the U.S. labor force and more women than ever are the breadwinners in their families. More women are also working in positions and fields that have been traditionally occupied by men.

Yet in 2014, the typical woman working full-time all year in the United States earned only 79 percent of what the typical man earned working full-time all year. The pay gap is even greater for African American and Latina women, with African American women earning 64 cents and Latina women earning 56 cents for every dollar earned by a white non-Hispanic man. The gender wage gap continues to be a very real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange American women and their families.

Since the beginning of his presidency, President Obama has taken a number of steps to close the national wage gap, including signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act during his first days in office.

To build on that work, today at the United State of Women Summit, the White House announced a new Equal Pay Pledge for private sector companies that share our commitment to equal pay – many of which are already taking steps on their own. 

Highlighting the critical role that businesses must play in reducing the national gender pay gap, 28 companies have signed on to the pledge, including Accenture, Airbnb, Amazon, American Airlines, BCG, Buffer, Care.com, CEB, Cisco, Deloitte, the Dow Chemical Company, Expedia, Inc., Gap Inc., Glassdoor, GoDaddy, Jet.com, Johnson & Johnson, L'Oréal USA, PepsiCo, Pinterest, Popcorn Heaven, PwC, Rebecca Minkoff, Salesforce, Slack, Spotify, Staples, and Stella McCartney. Additional companies are invited to join this effort in the coming months. Additional businesses are encouraged to sign the pledge here.

View the additional commitments and statements from signatories below, then learn more about President Obama's record on empowering women and girls.

White House Equal Pay Pledge Statements

Accenture

Accenture is proud to join the White House and along with other leading companies sign the Equal Pay Pledge. At Accenture, we believe that gender equality is an essential element of an inclusive workplace. This commitment extends to pay, and we strive to ensure that all our people – women and men – are compensated fairly and equitably from the moment we hire them through the milestones of their careers.

We are proactive in our efforts to ensure pay equality and have ongoing rigorous processes in place to identify discrepancies, looking carefully at specific roles and at all stages of an individual’s career. If we identify a problem, we fix it.

Airbnb

At Airbnb, we strive every day to create a world where people can belong anywhere, and that starts with creating a workplace where employees of every age, race, sex, ability/disability, religion, culture, sexual orientation and gender identity feel welcome and supported. We’re proud to commit to workplace fairness for all employees and also to support organizations that promote gender equality through their critical work around the world.

As our employee community grows, we are analyzing the factors that influence pay and promotion decisions to ensure equal pay for equal work across the organization. We have begun this process and will continue to collect more data, monitor, measure and innovate to ensure a system that rewards people fairly, based on their work and on our collective success. We are also offering ongoing education around unconscious biases and intervening to reduce the impact of bias in the recruiting, hiring and promotion process and have conducted trainings across the organization to raise awareness and identify areas for improvement.

We will continually expand our work in these areas as part of our effort to create an inclusive workplace. 

Through our partnerships with groups like the Global Fund for Women and Vital Voices, we are proud to support ongoing efforts towards gender equality around the world. We are also committed to improving the recruiting and retention of underrepresented groups in our organization through work with groups like Code 2040, the United Negro College Fund, Lesbians Who Tech and others. We recently launched Airbnb Connect, which will offer six-month hands on learning opportunities at Airbnb for people from underrepresented groups looking to make a career change to technology and we will continue to expand this outreach across our organization. 

Amazon

At Amazon we are committed to keeping compensation fair and equitable and audit our pay annually. We are also constantly looking for more ways to engage and advance the tens of thousands of talented women who work at Amazon - from our Affinity Groups, which play an important role in building internal networks for career development, to investigating mechanisms where we can interrupt any unconscious bias. We are at the early stages in some of this work and more advanced in other areas, but we're putting resources toward solution development.

American Airlines

American Airlines – the world’s largest airline – is proud to take the Equal Pay Pledge. Fairness, diversity and inclusion in the workplace are core values at American and the airline’s commitment to its equal employment opportunity policies is reaffirmed in writing each year to underscore their importance as an integral part of the company’s everyday business practices and long-term success. In addition, the adherence to these values is emphasized on the company’s career site. American welcomes the opportunity to continue its leadership in this area.

BCG

At BCG, we have a long-standing commitment to equal opportunity. We believe the best ideas and greatest impact come from diverse perspectives and experiences. BCG strives to be a place where all individuals are welcomed and given the opportunity to succeed and achieve their full potential. 

At BCG, achieving our diversity and inclusion goals is everyone's responsibility. We offer global best-in-class career development, mentorship, networking programs, and unconscious bias training, and are continuously seeking ways to improve in building diversity in the firm. We are proud to join with other companies in supporting equal pay for equal work.

Buffer

We’re honored at Buffer to sign the White House’s Equal Pay Pledge. When we first committed ourselves to transparency as a company, we had no idea how big of an impact it could make.

We've learned that transparency creates a culture of conversation, where everyone can feel empowered to share information and ask questions. Sharing our salaries publicly has sparked many thought-provoking conversations, and we’re humbled when other companies choose to adapt or modify our open salary formula for their needs.

As a team, we’re now working to ensure that we measure experience fairly across the company and that there's a clear path for both women and men to move up and into leadership roles. We’ve also launched a public salary calculator, to make it easier to understand how our salary formula is calculated.

In addition to consistently working to reduce unconscious biases and committing to an annual company-wide pay analysis, we will continue to publish all of our salaries, and our salary formula, in the hopes that our transparency might spark new ideas and inspire other business or individuals to commit to making pay equal for all.

Care.com

Care.com is committed to ensuring equal pay for like work and work of equal value among all employees. Beyond the obvious and legitimate reasons of fairness and equality, we believe that a company committed to gender equality will more effectively attract and retain top talent, which in turn yields greater business productivity. Care.com recognizes the importance of, and is committed to, providing a fair and objective pay system which is free from gender bias.  

Care.com’s objectives relating to equal pay are to:

• Eliminate unfair, unjust or unlawful practices that impact pay as it relates to gender;
• Take appropriate remedial action regarding evidence of gender pay inequity;
• Review other company policies and rewards to ensure consistency with equal pay principles.

To achieve these objectives Care.com will:

• Plan and execute regular equal pay reviews for all employees regardless of work status (leave or sickness);
• Carry out job evaluations and regular equal pay audits (which may be completed by internal HR staff or external compensation experts);
• Provide training and coaching for managers involved in determining pay;
• Inform team members as to how these processes and practices work and how their own pay is determined;
• Respond decisively to grievances on equal pay matters;
• Monitor pay/bonus statistics regularly (twice per year) and gather other relevant information to assess the impact of these objectives.

Care.com will also publish and communicate an annual internal report to company employees that will include the actions (and results of those actions) the company has taken to:

• Identify and eliminate gender inequity;
• Promote and achieve equality of opportunity for men and women;
• Eliminate practices, processes and procedures that create disparate treatment based on gender

CEB

Inclusion and justice are core to CEB’s culture and we are committed to gender equality and gender-balanced leadership. Through our partnerships with the world’s leading companies, we’ve seen meaningful advancements in gender equality in many countries around the world, but our research suggests there is more to be done. We are pleased to join the Equal Pay Pledge and commit to making equal pay a priority for our organization.

Cisco

Cisco is honored to be a founding signer of the White House Equal Pay Pledge. 

As a global company that has always been dedicated to fair pay, we recognize that achieving it is an ongoing commitment. We’re committed to not only driving fairness and equity across our own company, but to playing a leadership role in this critical initiative.

Within Cisco, we’ve already designed a pay parity framework to expand our ability to achieve the goal that all employees are paid fairly and equitably. Based on a holistic approach that includes everyone (both gender and ethnicity), it introduces powerful new analytics and targeted strategies to:

• Identify critical factors and root causes influencing pay parity
• Validate parity through regular testing, using findings to enhance Cisco’s already-existing guidelines on pay parity
• Proactively monitor, intervene, and minimize disparities over time

Ensuring that our people share in our mutual success through compensation strategies that focus on pay for performance, market competitiveness, and fairness and equity is a key promise at the heart of our people strategies. Pay parity helps us build the trusting environment that drives the best teams, allows us to retain the best talent, and positions us as a top employer.

Our pay parity strategies include regular reviews of our comprehensive data and monitoring of our environment. When we identify gaps, we’re committed to fixing them – fully funding robust solutions.

Expedia, Inc.

The science and data-driven culture that leads to innovation in technology released by Expedia, Inc. brands is also fostering unique programs to grow and retain a diverse set of leaders. In fact, this week we released data about women representation, pay parity, and ongoing efforts to increase the role of women in leadership within the Expedia, Inc. family of brands including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Orbitz Worldwide, Travelocity, Trivago, HomeAway, Egencia and more. The report revealed that pay here at Expedia is equal between men and women in similar roles and locations."

Ongoing offerings like our annual inclusive leadership summit, strong family-centric benefits programs, flexible working environments, required trainings on topics like micro-inequities, and inclusive hiring practices are helping to build a workplace that celebrates diverse opinions and experiences. These initiatives are critical to Expedia's continued success and we will remain dedicated to hiring, fostering and promoting talent of all kinds in our offices all around the world."

We commend the Obama Administration and applaud the many corporations that are taking similar actions to give all Americans the opportunity to contribute and succeed in their communities and organizations. Expedia, Inc. is proud to stand up for gender equality and take the Equal Pay Pledge."

 

Gap Inc.

For more than 45 years, Gap Inc. has stood for equality and opportunity. When Doris and Don Fisher founded our company in 1969, they contributed the same amount to open that first Gap store, and continued to run the business as equals. Together, they established a culture of equality that continues to inspire and guide us today.

In 2014, Gap Inc. became the first Fortune 500 Company to announce that we pay female and male employees equally for equal work on average across our global organization. This is an important step globally, as well as in the U.S., where a woman earns on average 79 cents for every dollar a man earns.

When we pay our employees fairly and treat them with dignity and respect, they are inspired to be their best, which in turn helps us deliver better products and experiences to our customers. And when our business succeeds and grows, we can become a stronger voice for equality and inclusion around the world.

We believe pay equality should not be an accomplishment; it’s the way the world should work and it’s time to get it done.

Gap Inc. pledges to continue our annual company-wide analysis of pay by gender as well as to identify and promote other best practices that will close the national gender wage gap.

Glassdoor

​As an employer and platform dedicated to workplace and salary transparency, Glassdoor is proud to join with the White House to commit to advancing pay equality at our company and serving as a catalyst for other companies across the United States and around the world.

• Glassdoor Commitment to Pay Equality as an Employer: Glassdoor has already conducted a thorough gender pay analysis of the compensation of approximately 600 employees and is publicly releasing not only the findings but also the method by which it was conducted to help other employers in their own efforts. While Glassdoor analysis reveals a 20 percent pay gap in the average base pay between men and women, when we control for age, job title, job level, department, and employee performance scores, the pay gap disappears. We commit to conduct this analysis for base pay and variable pay at least annually to ensure we prevent unintended bias in our compensation programs. Further, we are committed to continue to focus on efforts to attract, retain and advance women into higher paying leadership roles.
• Glassdoor Pay Transparency Helps American Workers Pay It Forward: Glassdoor believes greater transparency around compensation can illuminate pay inequities at companies and empower workers and employers to take positive steps to close pay gaps. We encourage workers everywhere to anonymously share their pay on Glassdoor to help others better understand what is fair and equitable compensation for specific jobs at specific companies.
• Glassdoor Supports Other Employers’ Pay Equality Efforts: Glassdoor is committing to help other employers in their own pay equality efforts and is launching a pilot program to conduct gender pay analysis through independent confidential economic research. We will continue to help employers highlight their pay equality commitments to their employees and candidates via a Pay Equality Pledge badge that may be added to their company’s Glassdoor profile page. More than 2,000 employers have already promoted pay equality commitments on Glassdoor.

We believe that through greater workplace transparency, the power and voice of people and the positive actions by employers, we can collectively make meaningful strides toward closing the very real gender pay gap and ensure all people everywhere are paid fairly for equal work and experience.

GoDaddy

At GoDaddy, our employees are our source of success, with an absolute connection between the quality of our team and the quality of the experience we can provide our customers. To fuel the strength of our workforce and better serve our diverse customers, GoDaddy is committed to closing the gender pay gap and maintaining salary parity for women and men in like roles. Beyond being the “right thing to do,” we know a diverse workforce results in better products and services.

To that end, GoDaddy has committed to:

• conducting an annual company-wide gender pay analysis across occupations;
• reviewing hiring and promotion processes and procedures to reduce unconscious bias and structural barriers; and
• embedding equal pay efforts into broader enterprise-wide equity initiatives

We are already taking these steps, as well as identifying and promoting other best practices, to help close the national wage gap and ensure fundamental fairness for all workers.

Jet.com

Equal pay for equal work is the embodiment of Jet's value system that is anchored in trust, transparency and fairness. We are proud to have always been on the right side of the gender wage gap issue and we enthusiastically take this important pledge.

Johnson & Johnson

We are responsible.

Three incredibly powerful words, and the first three words of the Johnson & Johnson Credo; a simple, one-page document, guiding our actions and serving as our moral compass for more than 70 years. It’s not a mission, it’s a statement of responsibilities. One critical responsibility is to our employees.

We believe that supporting our women employees—in fact, supporting all our 130,000+ employees and their families who work with us throughout the world—is not just a matter of good corporate citizenship, it’s good business.

We are responsible for employee’s health and wellness.

Women are at the helm of science and technology and are responsible for bringing key innovations to market. As such a valued resource, it’s critical that we foster a culture of health—enabling vibrant and longer lives for our employees. Our vision is to have the healthiest workforce. We believe there’s nothing more personal or more important to every individual on earth than their health and that of their family.

We at Johnson & Johnson have created an environment where employees can actively engage in their health and achieve their ‘best self’ at work, at home and in their communities. Our employee wellness programs have, undoubtedly, led to a healthier and more productive, engaged and satisfied workforce, which reaffirms our belief that an investment in our employee’s health is an investment in our company’s health.

We are responsible for helping employees fulfill their family responsibilities.

We ask our employees to help us care for the world, one person at a time, and that includes members of their family. Those aren’t just words. We encourage it and provide ways to act on it.

Johnson & Johnson is immensely proud of our work life effectiveness programs and policies, which allow us to be at the forefront of driving the type of critical change needed to align workplace policies with the realities of the 21st Century family. The programs we have in place empower moms—and dads, too— to bring their best to work while still meeting their family responsibilities. By doing so, these programs help empower all of our employees, including women, to succeed and advance in our company.

We believe that the health of our employee’s families is a true competitive advantage. It allows us to attract and retain top talent within our organization. When employees feel good at home, they come to work and make each day their best day ever. In turn, that allows Johnson & Johnson to help people everywhere live longer, healthier and happier lives.

We are responsible for the equal employment, development and advancement of our employees.

Women have always helped shape and lead Johnson & Johnson and will always be at the heart of this great company. Today women hold 43 percent of manager and executive positions combined, and they represent 30 percent of our Board of Directors.

Johnson & Johnson has an ongoing commitment to review our policies and actions to ensure that fair decisions are being made. As a company, we strive to bridge the gender gap, and it’s our commitment to continue to evolve and lead the way.

We are responsible for doing more.

We’re very proud of the way in which we take care of our employees. But know this—we’re never satisfied, and we can always do better! Johnson & Johnson commends the Administration and we applaud the other companies and organizations who have come together to sign this Equal Pay Pledge, to make sure we all do more.

Like Our Credo, this pledge will continue to hold us responsible.

L'Oréal USA

L'Oréal USA is a steadfast supporter of gender balance in the workplace and we are proud to stand with other companies, at the United State of Women, who have chosen to make pay equity a priority. L'Oréal believes that a diversified and fulfilled workforce will only strengthen our creativity, allowing us to understand our consumers better and enable us to develop the most innovative products for them. L'Oréal USA has been a longtime advocate for creating a fair work environment, becoming the first U.S. company to be certified with the EDGE (Economic Dividends for Gender Equality) global standard for workplace gender equality. Signing the White House's Equal Pay pledge allows us to reaffirm our commitment to reducing any meaningful difference in salaries between men and women to the point that they disappear. And we encourage other organizations and employers to join us in this important pledge.

PepsiCo

With female full-time workers in the United States making only 79 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, PepsiCo is committed to ensuring that women earn equal pay for equal work. That’s why we put in place a comprehensive process to review our hiring practices, performance assessments, promotion decisions, and pay equity assessments. In addition, PepsiCo will continue our efforts to end unconscious bias and create an inclusive environment where women are hired, developed professionally, and promoted into leadership positions. To affirm our commitment, PepsiCo is proud to sign the Equal Pay Pledge.

Pinterest

At Pinterest, we’re building a product that inspires everyone. Our success depends on our ability to understand the perspectives and needs of people worldwide.

A company that’s more diverse and inclusive is a more creative and effective one. We've publicly shared our diversity hiring goals and our commitment to building a more diverse company. We're treating this like any other business problem and identifying goals to hold ourselves accountable. Data is key; we need more transparency around compensation, promotion and demographics to make progress.

Our leadership team partners with our head of diversity, Candice Morgan, to ensure accountability for equity on measures like hiring and promotions within our workforce, and cultivating a sense of belonging for each member of our team. With regard to pay, we’ve been working with a third party firm that audits our data and ensures we’re making equitable decisions at Pinterest.

Popcorn Heaven

I am proud to sign onto the Equal Pay pledge and reinforce my commitment to fairness and equity at Popcorn Heaven. While working for my father’s business, I saw the pay gap first hand and recognized the need to challenge the status quo. When my father leveled out his salary structure, I saw a boost in morale and the loyalty and commitment of his staff members got stronger.

When I went into business for myself, I vowed to get it right the first time–ensuring that my female employees felt every bit as valued as the men working next to them. I’ve worked with my colleagues at the Main Street Alliance to spread awareness of the prevalence of unequal pay and to develop commonsense solutions that work for business owners and employees alike.

PwC

The business community has a crucial role to play in promoting equality across society. At PwC, we’re proud of what we’re doing to not only be a progressive employer, but one that lives up its purpose – “to build trust in society and solve important problems.” PwC joins other corporate leaders in advancing the dialogue around the critical issue of reducing the national wage gap. Our goal is to inspire change that will help move all of us one step closer to fairness, building a much more innovative world in which men and women have the same opportunities and choices.

Rebecca Minkoff

Rebecca Minkoff commends the White House for its efforts to break down gender gap barriers and provide women with equal pay. As an organization conceived and led by a female entrepreneur, we understand the importance of supporting women early in their careers. While progress has been made in the fashion industry, we pledge to work to empower future generations of female entrepreneurs by providing them with equal opportunities in our organization. We will continue to support our female employees by ensuring that they earn 100% of men's wages within our company.

Salesforce

Salesforce is reinforcing our commitment to closing the gender wage gap. We assessed the salaries of global employees and spent nearly $3 million dollars to eliminate any statistically significant differences in pay. Moving forward, Salesforce plans to monitor and review salaries on an ongoing basis—making equal pay a part of our company’s DNA. In addition to analyzing salaries regularly, Salesforce will continue to focus on equal opportunity and equal advancement by increasing access to growth opportunities for all.

Slack

At Slack, one of the most important things we are doing right now is addressing diversity and inclusion in the infancy of our organizational history. Our primary goal is to achieve a workplace where all people can thrive. Central to this effort is ensuring that we examine all decisions regarding hiring/recruiting, promotion, compensation, employee recognition and management structure to ensure that we are not inadvertently advantaging one group over another.

With our success comes an obligation to extend our impact outside the company. We hope to move the needle with our commitment to inclusion. The best outcome we could have would be a generation of Slack alumni starting new companies, being role models, and setting examples in this space.

Signing the pledge reaffirms our commitment to equity in the workforce, and building processes and procedures to ensure that there are opportunities for all to succeed. And we encourage other organizations and employers to do the same.

Spotify

At Spotify we value the incredible contributions of all our talented employees equally, and we acknowledge this by ensuring we consistently review our compensation structures and benefits that establish gender pay equity across the organization. We commit to conducting industry analyses, removing biased reviews and in turn making regular adjustments to the set the bar high on closing the gender pay gap for ourselves and encourage others to do the same.

We believe that women and men who undertake the same work, at the same level, should always be remunerated justly for the job they do. We know that individuals thrive when they are compensated fairly for the contributions they make to their organization.

In addition, we acknowledge that women are often dissuaded by roles in technology not only due to the low representation of women in this industry but of the lower value placed on their contributions in these roles. In tech, women are promoted at lower rates and paid significantly less. Our support of the Women in Tech industry goes beyond just closing this pay gap, we actively partner, sponsor and contribute to ours and other organizations who are focused on ensuring women are encouraged into STEM careers and feel valued in making that choice. Increasing women and girls educated in these areas contributes to higher economic growth.

Staples

Staples values all of its female associates, and understands the important role gender equality plays in fostering an inclusive workplace. By publicly showing our commitment to advancing women in the workforce, we hope to help raise awareness of the gender-based wage gap that currently exists, and lend a voice to the movement to provide fair pay for all.

At Staples, we have always recognized the strategic advantage in hiring, engaging and retaining female talent. We are proud to share the following ways that Staples is encouraging the development of women in the workplace:

• We annually host a “Women’s Week” at our corporate headquarters, providing women with training and tools to develop and grow as leaders within Staples (included Simmons Leadership Conference for nominated female associates).
• We are participating in the Corporate Challenge, a gender equality initiative started by the Massachusetts Governor in concert with Bentley College.
• We committed to the 100% Talent: The Boston Women’s Compact, an initiative supported by Boston Mayor Martin Walsh aimed at making Greater Boston the premier place for working women in America by closing the wage gap and removing barriers to women’s advancement.
• Our Women Who Lead Associate Resource Groups strive to give women the resources they need to be successful in the workplace and beyond. They facilitate connections and partnerships among all associates to help support women’s initiatives. Ultimately, the goal is to help Staples become a leader in recruiting, developing and retaining female leaders.

We will continue to support programs like the White House Equal Pay Pledge to ensure that not only women associates of today but of the future are compensated as equally as their male counterparts, and are recognized for the unique perspectives and the important role they play in the businesses of America.

Stella McCartney

At Stella McCartney, we are proud of our gender diversity and are dedicated to continuing to foster a gender-balanced workplace. Women occupy 67% of our leadership team and we have an even higher number of women across the brand. We place gender equality as a strategic imperative across our talent pipeline. Stella McCartney was recently awarded the EDGE certification, the global standard for gender equality in the work place, across three of our core business centers in the USA, United Kingdom and Italy.

Having attained the EDGE certification, we are already committed to continually reviewing hiring and promotion processes and to conducting annual company-wide analysis, including fairness and equal pay for all.

Natalia Merluzzi is Senior Policy Advisor for the Domestic Policy Council