Twitter Largely Applauds As 'Gender Pay Gap Bot' Calls Out Brands Posting Puff Messages On International Women's Day

Yesterday was International Women's Day, a day intended to celebrate the achievements of women in society, but as with similar events like Black History Month and Pride Month, the day saw social media largely filled with jokes and corporate lip-service. Many organizations put out branded content celebrating the women in their company, and while many rolled their eyes at some of the more transparent panderings, one Twitter account became the day's celebrity — a bot that reported on the gendered differences in the median pay of employees at every company that tweeted about International Women's Day.

In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 36.8% lower than men's. https://t.co/DK2pSg8jcR

— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@PayGapApp) March 8, 2022

Known as "Gender Pay Gap Bot," it was created last year by U.K. couple Francesca Lawson and Ali Fensome. The bot uses the publically available gender pay gap service website, at which a user can enter the name of a company and receive information about the disparity between the way the employees pay men and women. It went viral yesterday as it caught multiple companies tweeting about their appreciation of their female employees when they appear to pay women a lesser salary than their male counterparts.

In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 68.6% lower than men's. https://t.co/Vk45EVqON4

— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@PayGapApp) March 7, 2022

In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 31% lower than men's. https://t.co/Fwebd06kTP

— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@PayGapApp) March 9, 2022

In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is 12.1% lower than men's. https://t.co/Zhzkkxj52j

— Gender Pay Gap Bot (@PayGapApp) March 9, 2022

It should be noted, however, that the bot itself doesn't tell the whole story of every organization, and some organizations stepped in to defend themselves. For example, the University of Sunderland responded to the bot by writing, "18.5% partly reflects the fact that there are some roles at the lower end of our pay structure, such as student ambassador, casual, domestic and administrative roles which tend to be predominantly filled by women."

Our Median Gender Pay Gap of 18.5% partly reflects the fact that there are some roles at the lower end of our pay structure, such as student ambassador, casual, domestic and administrative roles which tend to be predominantly filled by women. 1/3

— University of Sunderland (@sunderlanduni) March 7, 2022

The bot also highlighted some companies where women received equal or higher median pay than their male counterparts. Perusing the account now, one will find several quote-tweets that are missing the source tweet, presumably because the bot sparked a backlash against a company trying to show its appreciation for women.

At any rate, the account won the favor of Twitter users for the havoc it caused in calling out hollow corporate messaging and platitudes.

I have never seen any single account wreak more havoc on branded social content than the Gender Pay Gap Bot

— Helen R. Gradwell (@HelenGradwell) March 8, 2022

gender pay gap bot doing the lord’s work this international women’s day pic.twitter.com/z24GiJ0O2r

— oscar wilde 'n out (@mariasghost) March 8, 2022

This is brilliant. If your employer tweets about #IWD2022, @PayGapApp will tweet the gender pay gap for that company. 😱 This is not going well for a LOT of firms https://t.co/rWNHUyxMf3

— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) March 8, 2022

Gender Pay Gap bot is 🔥 @PayGapApp pic.twitter.com/WOEMi3tB3e

— Comrade RED (@comradarjun) March 9, 2022

It's an unfortunate fact that women are often paid less for the same job than their male counterparts, and even if the Gender Pay Gap bot doesn't directly influence change in that regard, at least it will discourage lip-service corporate posting online.