Make Transparency the Default to Close the Wage Gap

FOR MOST OF my career as a journalist, I’ve had no idea whether I made as much money as my male colleagues with equal education, experience, performance, and that ineffable and often highly subjective quality, “talent.” In many newsrooms, like much of corporate America, talking about pay is either actively discouraged, prohibited, or simply not done.

The one time I did learn that a male reporter doing the same job was earning more, I overheard a conversation in the elevator about how our boss paid him more because he had a family.

Well, he had a wife. Who made more than he did.

So much for those who would explain away the persistent gender wage gap as solely due to women making different career choices, failing to negotiate, lacking confidence or ambition, tending to work fewer hours, and requiring more flexible schedules or leave to handle caregiving responsibilities.

The pay gap is real. Recent research has found that as much as 38 percent of the wage gap can't be explained by anything other than discrimination. And much of that is unconscious - like my former boss' assumption that a man is a breadwinner and provider and needs to make more, and a woman's work is a choice.

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