We know that, on the whole, women’s median salary in the US is about 80 percent that of men. In my world, pay disparity was expressed in smaller increments: a woman would get 95 percent of the base pay of a man doing the same work. If I asked why she was getting 5 percent less, I’d be told, “It’s such a small difference, don’t worry about it.” Sometimes, I would fight back a little, with “then why don’t we pay her 105 percent of what he is getting?” It was always an uphill battle when, in reality, HR should have been flagging these issues and systematically addressing them.
