Experts: International Equal Pay Day | September 18
International Equal Pay Day, celebrated for the first time this 18 September, represents the longstanding efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value. Across all regions, women are paid less than men, with the gender pay gap estimated at 23 per cent globally. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls continues to be held back owing to the persistence of historical and structural unequal power relations, poverty and inequalities and disadvantages in access to resources and opportunities that limit women’s and girls’ capabilities. (United Nations)
Here are some experts from McGill University that can provide comment on this issue:
Lisa Cohen, Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Management
“Establishing fairness in pay is critical in organizations and yet extremely difficult to achieve. There is no universal yard stick with which to measure worth.”
Lisa Cohen is an Associate Professor at the Desautels Faculty of Management. Prior to joining Desautels, she was a faculty member at the London Business School, the Yale School of Management and the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine, where she taught in the areas of strategic human resources, organizational behavior and communications.
lisa.cohen2 [at] mcgill.ca (English)
Brian Rubineau, Associate Professor, Desautels Faculty of Management
“The biggest contributor to the gender pay gap is segregation – the fact that men and women tend to work in different jobs. This segregation itself is a problem. Why should maids be paid less than janitors? Working for equal pay includes removing the barriers that keep interested and qualified women from male-dominated jobs.”
Brian Rubineau is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Desautels Faculty of Management. His research investigates how informal social dynamics contribute to inequalities in occupations and labor markets. He has previously been a Residential Research Fellow at the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University and a Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
brian.rubineau [at] mcgill.ca (English)
