Twitter bot trolls companies tweeting about International Women's Day
I hope @PayGapApp has sent a message to companies that posting about ‘empowering women’ is not enough (Picture: Twitter / Metro.co.uk)

Since 2017, companies with over 250 employees have been required to report their gender pay gap every year.

But judging from conversations I’ve had with friends, awareness of this data is still pretty low. 

Or it was until last year, Tuesday 8 March – International Women’s Day 2022.

When the usual messages of ‘empowerment’, ‘celebration’ and ‘inspiration’ from companies started flooding social media that morning, my partner Ali Fensome and I confronted them with their own data on their gender pay gap via the @PayGapApp Twitter bot.

We created @PayGapApp to put the gender pay gap data back into the spotlight. 

When a company listed on the government’s gender pay gap service tweeted about International Women’s Day, the bot automatically responded with their median hourly pay gap data in a quote tweet. 

Within hours, our bot had 250k Twitter followers and companies with the most stark pay disparities were getting hundreds of retweets. 

Our aim was to highlight how photos of smiling female employees and inspirational quotes conceal what’s really going on behind the scenes. Women’s median hourly pay was less than men’s at 77% of companies in 2020-2021, which shows that the support companies’ pledge for International Women’s Day is rarely backed up by action. 

And if they’re not working to remove the barriers women in their organisation face, they’re not moving any closer to gender parity, and they shouldn’t claim otherwise on International Women’s Day. 

Our bot was also inspired by the frustration at seeing companies treat International Women’s Day as a marketing opportunity. ‘25% off lipsticks on IWD!’; ‘Join us for an IWD webinar with at least one female speaker!’; ‘Look at all the women we employ!’

These types of messages miss the point of International Women’s Day for me. Yes, it’s a chance to recognise our achievements so far, but it’s also an opportunity to reflect on what still needs to be done. 

It shouldn’t be a reason to sell us stuff, nor a brand-building exercise for employers. 

By contrasting companies’ sentimental words with cold hard data, we helped the public see through these empty gestures and start holding companies accountable for their gender pay gap.

Francesca and Ali
Francesca and Ali (Picture: Francesca Lawson)

How it works is quite simple: the bot matches the company names from the government data to their Twitter accounts, then it listens out for posts featuring International Women’s Day keywords, and when it finds a relevant tweet from one of the companies in the data, it retrieves and publishes the gender pay gap figures.

It’s Ali’s tech expertise that brought it all together – he works as a software consultant, so he had all the right skills to automate each step and make sure it worked seamlessly. 

That doesn’t mean there weren’t challenges along the way. For one, companies often use slightly different names between their social media accounts and the government data, which made matching companies to their Twitter usernames a bit more difficult. 

Academy trusts are the perfect example of this: their gender pay gap data is recorded for the whole trust, but each school within it might have a separate Twitter account. 

Since we launched @PayGapApp last year, we’ve posted over 8,000 tweets and had over 150million tweet impressions (the amount of times our tweets were shown to users). 

It’s picked up media attention from around the world, and resulted in the companies with the biggest gender pay gaps releasing statements to explain their data. 

This response from the public was better than we’d ever expected. It was so rewarding to see so many people engaging with the data, and finding what we’ve done useful. It shows the demand for transparency and authenticity – people want to see the evidence to support companies’ gender equality claims.  

The response from companies? Less remarkable. Several prioritised outsmarting the bot over acknowledging their data. 

They tried deleting posts, they tried removing the hashtags… around 20 companies just blocked the account. They tried to hide to avoid scrutiny, and it didn’t work. The bot caught up with them again when they reposted, and they faced criticism from the public for deleting the first tweet. Not a good look.

I hope @PayGapApp continues to send a message to companies that posting about ‘empowering women’ is not enough. We need the support you show on International Women’s Day to continue all year round. 

Where is that solidarity when we ask for a pay rise? Or when we get interrupted in meetings? Or when we report harassment?

To say something worth saying on any type of social issue – be it gender equality, LGBT rights, anti-racism, accessibility – you’ve got to already be doing something worth doing.

Now is the time for companies to acknowledge their gender pay gap, look at what’s causing it, and implement policies like increased paid parental leave for all genders, blind recruitment and higher wages.

And to all the employers caught by the bot: you’ve got a whole 12 months now to work on it, so that next International Women’s Day won’t be so embarrassing for you.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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