JNJ Johnson and Johnson

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)

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