79% Is Not Enough. Women Deserve More.
By Liza Landsman | President, Jet.com
You might notice that Jet.com looks a little bit different today. Today is Equal Pay Day — and we’re setting aside business as usual not only to help raise awareness of the gender pay gap, but hopefully also to spark new conversations on how to fix it.
Today’s date, April 4, marks how far into the year women have to work in order to match what men made the previous year. On average, women earn only 79 cents to every dollar men make. It’s a staggering disparity, and it hurts not only the women who aren’t being paid for the value they create, but the businesses in which they work. It’s a cliché, but it’s true: when you fail to create the right incentives for every member of your workforce, you shortchange 100% of the business. You lose great people and you demotivate the people who stay. As is always true when we fail to be inclusive, the gender pay gap harms our communities and our culture, and addressing it isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s the smart thing to do. But too many people are still completely unaware that it exists.
Today is all about changing that. Today at 11AM (EST), we took to Facebook Live to demonstrate just how much is missing when you take away 21%. Help spread the word that 79% is not enough — share the video from the today with friends to help raise awareness that #WomenDeserveMore.
As I said last year, we are incredibly proud that Jet has always been on the right side of the gender wage gap issue. Fairness is core to our mission; the early promise of Jet was to level the playing field for consumers and retailers, and that dedication extended into our workplace from the start. Like many other companies, though, we still have work to do to get where we should be. That’s why we’ve joined with L’Oreal and Unilever to invest in the Female Founders Fund (F3), which focuses on women-led startups making an incredible impact across multiple areas including e-commerce, web-enabled products and services, marketplaces, and platforms. Part of the solution moving forward isn’t just pay parity, but level parity — the more women there are in senior leadership positions, the more of a catalyst we’ll have for an inclusive “old girls’ network.” The F3 is helping to lay the groundwork for a future where the gender pay gap is a thing of the past, and we’re proud to support it.
So what’s our call to action? We should all work to elevate this conversation for change and demand for equal pay by working with government leaders across the country.
Women deserve more, and they’ve earned more. Let’s work together to make sure they get it.
Liza Landsman is President of Jet.com.
