Social media has empowered corporations to go to unbelievably bold lengths to make themselves look progressive while effecting precisely zero change. Domino’s is a perfect example: they spent $50 million on an ad to let people know they gave local businesses a grand total of… $100,000.

It’s obscene.

Luckily, social media has also given regular people the tools to fight back. One of the snarkiest accounts holding corporations to task is the Gender Pay Gap Bot.

The way it works is simple. When businesses tweet about international women’s day using #IWD2022, the bot searches for their pay data in the UK pay database. Then, it quote-tweets the celebratory “bla bla bla we love women” tweet with a single devastating line:

“In this organisation, women’s median hourly pay is X% lower than men’s.”

Name and shame

The bot has tweeted about 200 times in the last four hours (though some may be duplicates) and shows no signs of slowing. It calls out nonprofits, government organizations, and corporations alike.

The #IWD tweets are painfully earnest. It’s easy to forget that these companies are fully aware that they pay women less than men.

Take The Royal College of Surgeons of England. “Amazing to see so many women (and men) celebrating #InternationalWomensDay with us at the #homeofsurgery. How do we #BreakTheBias? We provide opportunities, challenge stereotypes and promote surgery to all ages, genders, races and more. Because #CareersInSurgery are for everyone!” writes their social media manager.

“In this organisation, women’s median hourly pay is 17.2% lower than men’s,” replies the Gender Pay Gap Bot.

If you look at the comments of the original tweet, many other people have also caught the hypocrisy of the empty social media hype. It’s incredible that they thought they could get away with such hollow sentiments. But The Royal College of Surgeons of England truly did not seem to believe it was a problem until the bot publically shamed them for it.

The need for transparency

The only reason this works — and the reason such a bot doesn’t address the many US-based companies doing the same thing — is because, in the U.K., legislature demands that employers with over 250 employees share their pay data.

“From 2017, if you are an employer who has a headcount of 250 or more on your ‘snapshot date’ you must comply with regulations on gender pay gap reporting.” — Gender pay gap guidance for employers from the U.K. government

This transparency doesn’t actually do anything to change the gap, but it’s a necessary first step. Once the data is available, potential employees can question their future employers at interviews. Internally, employees can band together and demand change. Externally, I can look at the data and say if I ever need a lawyer, I will certainly avoid Shearman & Sterling due to their frankly shocking 52% disparity between men and women.

Make corporations afraid again

But transparency alone isn’t enough. What surprised me is that most commenters are totally shocked by the disparity and hypocrisy:

But the information isn’t new. This legislation has been in place for five years now. This shows that merely mandating transparency isn’t sufficient. The information exists, but nobody knows it’s there.

The GPG bot is doing some important work weaponizing this information. For example, McAffee has underpaid women between 20–29% since reporting was mandated in 2017. And yet like clockwork, they tweet about #InternationalWomensDay. If corporations continue to believe it’s enough to post a cutesy tweet on social media and never think about their obligations to achieve pay parity again, they’ll never change. The GPG bot removes their ability to feign ignorance.

But that’s not all the bot has accomplished. GPGB does three things, aside from putting the fear of the mob into these companies:

1. It raises awareness. It’s not enough, but it’s something. As I mentioned above, this awareness can be weaponized internally and externally to create pressure.
2. It highlights the fact that these companies know they haven’t achieved parity. They were legally obliged to put together the pay gap report! So they know exactly how audacious it is to tweet blithely about women when they’re underpaying women by a significant margin. Sometimes it pays to remember how impertinent companies are. They know all about their own transgressions. They post about it on their own website. They just hope nobody else notices, and their job can be done.
3. It shows the usefulness of transparency. The US has no such equivalent legislature, and the U.K. doesn’t have equivalent legislature or reporting for other demographics, like race or sexuality. But this bot demonstrates the power of such transparency.

A tweet is just a tweet. This bot can’t force companies to pay women more. We have to move beyond awareness and into the actual potential for change. That will only come when legislation forces organizations to achieve pay parity.

In the meantime, if all this bot accomplishes is making corporations think twice before posting saccharine faux-pro-empowerment bullshit, that’s enough for me.