The Guardian: Does Patagonia have the answer for narrowing the gender wage gap?

The debate around fairer pay for women feels more prominent and urgent than ever. Yet, despite this momentum, new estimates suggest the gender pay gap won’t be closed anytime soon. A new report from the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take up to 170 years for the world’s women to earn wages that are equitable to men’s. While that’s the global picture, things aren’t much better at home in the US. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, in 2015, female full-time employees earned about $0.79 for every dollar made by full-time male employees. For minorities, the data is even more disparaging: African American women earn $0.64, Native American women earn $0.59 and Latinas earn $0.54.

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While Patagonia has been proactive about gender parity, some companies have been harder to turn around, according to Natasha Lamb, director of equity research and shareholder engagement at Arjuna Capital.

Arjuna, a Massachusetts-based wealth management company that champions social responsibility, and it invests in some of the biggest tech companies in the US, including eBay, Expedia, GoDaddy, Facebook, Alphabet, Intel, Adobe, Microsoft and Amazon. Last year, Lamb decided to take a bold public stance on the gender wage gap by filing shareholder resolutions at each of these companies, requesting that they publicly share data on the differences in pay between men and women.

Continue reading this article at The Guardian.