Gender pay gap bot targets law firms (again!)

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By Emily Hinkley on

25

It’s back with added accountability

A Twitter bot that gained a huge following last International Women’s Day for broadcasting details of big firms’ gender pay gap has sprung into action once more.

The account @PayGapApp became notorious for retweeting law firm and other employers’ tweets commemorating the global day with an auto-response detailing their median hourly pay gap using data from a UK government website.

This year the bot has returned to its work but this time with the added ability to detail how each firm’s gap has changed since last year. Explaining the new feature the bot tweeted that it will allow followers to “see who’s making progress, and who’s letting the gap widen”.

The bot is even taking requests, encouraging Twitter users to “Tweet ‘@paygapapp pay gap for (company name)’ to get a reply with an employer’s pay gap stats”.

This year’s IWD theme is ‘#EmbraceEquity’ and many firms have marked the occasion with tweets describing their commitment to improving gender equity.

Here are some of the legal establishments where the gap has remained the same or widened over the past 12 months, according to the bot:

Birketts

Crown Prosecution Service

Menzies

Mishcon de Reya

Moore Barlow

Stephensons Solicitors

These are the legal establishments where the gender pay gaps have narrowed over the past 12 months or there is no previous data:

Brodies

Forbes Solicitors

The Law Society

Mewburn Ellis

Shearman & Sterling

Talbots law

All employers with 250 or more employees are required by law to publish their gender pay gap figures each year. These can all be searched for and compared using the government’s official ‘gender pay gap service’ which is understood to be the bot’s point of reference.

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