Meanwhile in Edinburgh hundreds of swimmers took to the North Sea at Portobello Beach to make a statement on International Women’s Day despite the tough weather conditions faced by millions around the UK.
The Gender Pay Gap Bot uses statistics from the designated service on the official gov.uk website, through which UK companies with more than 250 employees are required to publish their payroll data, and takes a comparison of men’s and women’s average pay across the organisation.
New gig: Ariana Madix, 37, is putting her dancing shoes on. The reality star is reportedly joining the cast of Dancing With The Stars when the new season begins in the Fall (pictured in Los Angeles in July 2022)
Investment firm Scottish Widows also sparked outrage after using International Women’s Day to promote its services to close the ‘pension gap’ – while paying its female employees 14 percent less than its male employees.
Ms Lawson said the work of the Gender Pay Gap Bot will continue for years to come, never with the goal to stop any companies from tweeting, Ms Lawson said, but to encourage them to provide ‘a bit more of a considered response’.
Francesca Lawson, 28, set up the bot in 2021 with Ali Fensome, also 28, after being inspired by other automated Twitter accounts and wanting to force ‘a bit more accountability’ around International Women’s Day.
Some of the companies the bot has already called out in 2023 for their most recently available pay gap data include St Mary’s University, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and airline Emirates.
The bot highlighted figures from government departments and organisations such as the DCMS, which has a median pay gap of almost 10 percent, and the Department of Transport, which has a gap of almost 13 percent – more than seven percent higher than in the previous year.
For those who did not brave the fiercely cold waters, many women took to social media to call out gender pay gaps and point out the hypocrisy of many companies appearing to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Their system pulls from published government data – accessible to all – to shine a light on the pay gap and make sure people ‘think a bit more critically’ and do not ‘take these sorts of messages of empowerment and inspiration at face value’.
‘I always feel this sense of frustration from seeing all these lovely supportive messages from companies but the needle doesn’t seem to be shifting that much on gender equality more generally, but specifically, we can see in the gender pay gap data, it’s still a massive problem,’ Ms Lawson said.
Domestic violence charity Refuge’s latest available data shows a gender pay gap of 23.9 percent in favour of men – which was described as ‘unbelievable’ by women, given the charity helps women and children escape violence.
The account is also providing a request feature in 2023, which lets users tweet at them asking for Online English As Second Language 3rd Grade Program the data from a specific company – as opposed to just the organisations who are tweeting International Women’s Day messages.
One of the worst discrepancies Ms Lawson recalled was from Ryanair, where last year the Gender Pay Gap Bot tweeted its 2020/2021 gender pay gap data – that ‘women’s median hourly pay is 68.6 percent lower than men’s’ – when the company had tweeted a message of support for its female staff.
As well as celebrating their own achievements, those taking the sunrise dip teamed up with the Outdoor Swimming Society to encourage groups to take part in wild swimming events across the UK to raise money for women who need it.
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