A woman in New York City made headlines after she tweeted about her fight for equal pay.
Kimberly Nguyen, a 25-year-old user experience writer, tweeted earlier this month that she had seen a full-time job posting at her company. .
and Tweets currently viewed more than 12 million timesNguyen said he learned about the pay gap thanks to the Pay Transparency Act, which took effect in New York City last October.
According to the New York City Human Rights Commission, which implements the law, the law requires companies with at least four employees, one of whom is based in the city, to have minimum and maximum job postings. must include the salary of
“My company just posted a job posting on LinkedIn for the job I’m currently doing (hence the hiring of another UX writer), but thanks to the Pay Transparency Act, this person has more I just found out they’re going to pay me $32,000 to $90,000, which is more than they’re currently paying me, so I applied,” she tweeted on March 7.
In an interview with “Good Morning America,” Nguyen said when the city’s Pay Transparency Act was first enacted, “I actually started doing a Google search online and asked, ‘How much do UX writers make?’ ‘ said.
“I started looking at job listings for UX writers in New York City and realized the advertised salary was much higher than what I was making,” she said. .
Nguyen saw a much higher salary for a full-time job when she looked at her company’s job postings this month. She mainly used her Twitter to vent her frustrations, she said.
“I was so angry,” she said. “To know that [full-time employees] Even though they make between $32,000 and $90,000 more than I make in basically the same job, I found them rude and disrespectful. ”
Nguyen said he is a poet himself and hopes his tweets will reach “poet friends” on Twitter rather than going viral.
“I wasn’t meant to be the poet laureate of salary transparency,” she said, adding, “Suddenly, the tweet exploded.
Women earn 82 cents for every dollar men earn
Nguyen has continued to document his fight for equal pay on Twitter since his first tweet and says he is now looking for positions at other companies.
Her tweets particularly caught the attention of women, many of whom pointed out that New York City’s Pay Transparency Act has brought more attention to the gender pay gap.
“As women of color we inherently know that we are disgustingly underpaid, but can we really see it?” one Twitter user wrote.
“This is it. When people claim there is no gender pay gap, this is what we are talking about,” wrote another.
According to the Pew Research Center, in the United States, women earn, on average, 82 cents for every dollar men earn. This number hasn’t declined in recent years, and data shows it’s getting worse with age for mothers, women of color, and women of all ages.
This year March 14th is Equal Pay Day, showing how much some women will have to work through 2023 to earn what non-Hispanic white men earned in 2022. increase.
Equal pay day for black women won’t come until July. For moms, equal pay day won’t come until August. For Latina women, Equal Pay Day won’t come until October for her, and for Native women Equal Pay Day won’t come until November for her, according to the Women’s Association of American Colleges.
Calendars differ between Asian American and Pacific Islander women. According to the National Asia Pacific American Women’s Forum, “On average, [Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander] Women earn only 75 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men. ” much later this year. ”
MORE: Black women won’t reach pay par with white men until 2130, report finds
The impact of the gender pay gap has been felt in the past, as the crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic pushed more than two million women out of the workforce, many of them to a more precarious economic base than men. Seen in person for 3 years. Existing gaps, experts say.
With record numbers of women now returning to the workforce, Nguyen said he is one of those who hope wage transparency will also improve to support women.
“I hope people continue to support the Pay Transparency Act because it’s obviously very helpful,” Nguyen said. I don’t have any criteria, I don’t know what to look for, I’m just dealing with invisible numbers, and having concrete numbers in front of me is very helpful and very It’s important.”
At least eight states and cities, including Colorado, California, Maryland, Washington, and Nevada, have already enacted laws that provide some degree of wage transparency.
Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Center for Women’s Law, a policy organization that fights for gender justice, told the “GMA” last year that many of these states have seen employers pay based on pay. They said they are banning them from setting individual salaries through their predecessors who help women.
MORE: US women’s soccer team gets equal pay with groundbreaking deal
“These payroll bans are important to prevent pay discrimination from continuing from job to job throughout a career,” Martin said, noting that the ban would ensure that “employers don’t hold all the cards.” He pointed out that it is also useful for guarantees.
Tips for women claiming their salary
Martin and Katie Donovan, fair pay experts and founders of Equal Pay Negotiations, share four tips for fighting for equal pay.
1. Find out about salary in advance.
“In part because of the internet, and partly because of these policy changes, we live in an era where we can find more information about salaries for specific roles and for specific companies than we did 10 or 15 years ago. Alive. That’s the source of ‘power for workers,’ Martin said.
“Of course, it’s always a good idea to do your research in situations like this and learn as much as you can about what’s publicly available and what employers are legally required to provide regarding salary information. It is,” she added.
2. Feel free to ask about salary.
“There is a bit of a cultural shift going on with employers increasingly understanding that disclosing salary ranges is a fair practice. We are doing it,” said Martin. He said. “That means it’s a more reasonable question for job seekers to ask employers if the information is available, even if the employer hasn’t posted it.”
3. In most cases, you are protected from giving out your salary history.
“Under the Federal Equal Pay Act, many courts have held that pay history does not legally justify paying women less than men in the same role, so in practice, There is some protection from wage discrimination based on history,” Martin said.
“That’s one of the reasons. If I were in that position, I would say, ‘What you really want to understand is the salary I’m asking for in this job. What that is,'” she said. . “I hope it’s based on some data about market rates for that position, found around the world through sites like Glassdoor.”
4. Find above median salary range:
“As a candidate, when you get a job offer, you say, ‘We don’t accept the median, that’s low,'” Donovan said. “Aim for the 75th percentile and above because that’s where white people are hanging.”
