Companies Pledge to Review Pay to Address Inequalities
June 13 2016 - 7:00PM
Dow Jones News
WASHINGTON—More than two dozen companies including Amazon.com
Inc., PepsiCo Inc. and Dow Chemical Co. have signed a White House
pledge to conduct an annual gender pay analysis aimed at
eliminating inequitable compensation, the Obama administration said
Monday.
The 28 companies agreed to review their hiring and promotion
processes and embed equal-pay efforts into other workplace
initiatives. Other participants include Accenture PLC, American
Airlines Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Deloitte, Expedia Inc., Gap
Inc., Johnson & Johnson, L'Oré al USA and Staples Inc., the
White House said.
"The pledge is to actually take action," said Tina Tchen,
executive director for the White House's Council on Women and
Girls.
The effort is part of a White House summit on women and girls
Tuesday that is drawing thousands of people to Washington. It will
portray President Barack Obama's two terms as a time of notable
progress for women because the president expanded health-care
coverage, signed a pay-equity bill and campaigned against sexual
violence toward women, among other things.
Officials will emphasize that more progress needs to be made to
lift women economically and socially, playing into one of
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's prime
appeals to voters this year.
Mr. Obama has made improving women's financial standing a key
plank of his White House agenda, emphasizing in speeches that he
wants a fairer workplace for his two daughters. Economists and
policy makers who support him say his repeated calls for workplace
flexibility helped to drive a wave of cultural change inside
offices nationwide—an imprint that may exceed his few legislative
victories on women's issues.
Broad measures of women's economic success remain stubbornly
low. Female labor-force participation, which peaked in 1999, has
further declined since Mr. Obama took office, falling from 59.2% in
2009 to 57% in 2014, Labor Department figures show. Women working
full time on average earn 79% of what men do, just slightly more
than at the start of this administration.
Write to Janet Adamy at janet.adamy@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 13, 2016 18:45 ET (22:45 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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