News — 18 September, 2020

International Equal Pay Day: Our Pursuit of Gender Equity

Today is International Equal Pay Day, and we're marking the day by sharing what we are doing to support the International Equal Pay Day initiative in our organization.

Today, September 18th, marks the first International Equal Pay Day. Declared last year by the UN, the day will serve to further galvanize public and private actors alike to pursue the realization of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8.5: Equal pay for equal work. Globally, women earn 23% less than men for work of equal value. And, at the current rate of change, it will take an incredible 257 years to close the global gender pay gap.

At HOT, as much of our work is driven by the SDGs, including bolstering disaster response efforts and improving upon progress toward clean energy solutions, we also seek to promote equal rights, access, and participation for all in society, including equal pay for work of equal value.

So what is HOT doing to prioritize SDG 8.5 within our own organization and support the International Equal Pay Day initiative?

1. First, HOT has been working actively towards pay equity for the last two years. In January 2019, we instituted our Salary Framework after recognizing the need for a more transparent and equitable salary determinant system. With a public salary framework, we aimed to bring consistency, clarity, and understanding to our salary formula and identify and eliminate existing pay inequalities within our team.

2. Second, underpinning HOT’s philosophy that everyone should receive equal pay for equal responsibilities and demonstrated performance, we are undertaking an evaluation to better understand HOT’s progress toward pay equity and will use that to inform a full compensation framework review to be completed within the year.

3. Third, we are beginning a new Gender, Diversity & Inclusion (GDI) initiative with 20 metrics for evaluating our progress as an organization. We began this initiative by hosting a gender data skillshare for our entire team focused on identifying common misunderstandings and assumptions around gender and discussing the differences between sex-aggregated vs gender data. We subsequently released an org-wide GDI survey with the aim of establishing a baseline for some of the identified metrics, including how respected and valued each staff member feels by HOT and what the current understanding and knowledge of GDI issues is. As a follow up, in the near future we will be forming an internal GDI focus group so we can better strategize and implement GDI-centered policies throughout our team and our work, from recruitment efforts to our interactions within the greater OSM ecosystem.

4. Finally, we’re evaluating representation in management relative to gender and geography throughout the organization.

As all of our work at HOT is ultimately centered around ensuring the marginalized in our global society are seen, accounted for, and included, we recognize our responsibility to identify and correct any disparities within our own organization. To that end, as our team grows to meet the challenge of mapping an area home to 1 billion people as part of our Audacious Project, we plan to channel more of our resources and efforts to ensure a diverse and inclusive organization and work to ensure equitable access and opportunity for the entire HOT community.