Brands come together to study wage gap

The White House last week announced that 29 well-known brands and organizations have signed on in its pledge to study gender wage gap.

The group is the first to join the White House Equal Pay Pledge. Its goal is to study pay gaps among male and female employees.

Notable companies signing the pledge include, Apple, Facebook, Coca-Cola Co., Nike, Target, Delta, Anueuser-Busch InBev, Hilton, IBM, LinkedIn and General Motors.

Though the initiative will give the White House a chance to study the wage structures of participating organizations, male and female employees won’t necessarily be paid equally there.

A White House press release states:

• Acknowledging the critical role businesses must play in reducing the national pay gap.
• Committing 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.
• Embedding equal pay efforts into broader enterprise-wide equity initiatives.
• Pledging to take these steps as well as identify and promote other best practices that will close the national wage gap to ensure fundamental fairness for all workers.

"The first step is to understand whether or not there is a pay discrepancy," Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, told Bloomberg. "What we find is that employers who recognize that there is a pay discrepancy and are willing to go through that exercise also are willing to close it."

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The Institute for Women's Policy Research announced in 2015 its findings that women in the U.S. on average made 79 cents for every $1 that men earn. The U.S. Labor Department announced the same findings independently.

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