Disturbing Gender Pay Gap Report Shows Female Employees At Meta Are Paid 15.7% Less Than Men

Meta and many other companies joined the International Women's Day celebration yesterday. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp posted advice for the "extraordinary women" of the LinkedIn community.

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It's ironic because the only advice the tech giant should be imparting is how to help the women who work there earn the same as the men.

Because female employees in the United Kingdom and Ireland at software company Meta are paid substantially less than male employees.

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The current gender pay gap report for Meta's U.K. and Ireland divisions shows that female employees are paid less than their male counterparts. This holds for both hourly and salaried positions.

Moreover, the company's incentives are lower for women, and men make up a more significant percentage of the company's high-earning employees at the London and Dublin offices serving the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Reuters

In Meta U.K., the typical hourly salary for males is ?1, but for women, it is just 92 pence.

Women also get incentives that are 34.8% lower on average than those given to males at Meta, and they make up fewer than 35% of the highest-paid positions.

In 2021–2022, women earned, on average, 2.1% less than men, and the data suggests that this difference is getting bigger, which shows that gender equality in the workplace is getting worse.

According to Meta's first report on gender equality (2018), women earned 0.9% less than males.

Examining the gap report for Meta's Irish operations is much sadder.

The study, done privately and released in December as part of new laws that went into effect in Ireland last year, found that in 2022, women working in all fields in Ireland were paid, on average, 15.7% less than men.

The gap widens even more when looking at bonus pay, with women receiving an average bonus of 43.3% lower than males.

Here is what Meta said about their 'pay gap':

Meta openly blamed "unequal representation" for their pay disparity.

"We have more men than women working at Meta in technical roles, particularly senior technical roles," the company said in a statement.

They further claimed that the pay for those with these "skills" is higher than for "non-technical roles" and that "the pool of this talent, particularly for more senior positions, continues to be predominantly male."

"This is a challenge faced by all technology companies and many companies in other industries. We recognize that this is a journey, one we are fully committed to, and we believe the actions we are taking now are having and will continue to have an impact on improving the diversity of our workforce,"?Meta added.

Meta employs around 3,000 people in Ireland and 5,000 in the U.K., or 10% of its worldwide workforce.

Meta said in the report that it wants 50% of its worldwide employees to be women and underrepresented minorities. Yet, its diversity reporting has stagnated.

Since Meta started providing its diversity report in 2018, women have made up 37% of the workforce, an increase of 1%.

The social network business stated it is tackling this representation problem via recruiting, including its "diverse slate approach, and analyzing and assessing its "attract" strategy.

"Last year, we established an external partnership model comprising three flagship partnerships: ColorinTech, Everywoman, and BYP (Black Young Professionals)," Meta commented.

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"All these partnerships result in a steady increase in the hiring rates of underrepresented candidates, and we have seen increases in female representation at Meta, including in technical and leadership roles."

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