by Sara Shapiro-Plevan and Rabbi Rebecca W Sirbu for EJewishPhilanthropy
She-cession. None of us like how this sounds, nor the implications. This is not the way women want to make headlines. This term was coined just a few weeks ago by C. Nicole Mason, president and chief executive of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Job losses are staggering. Women, however, are faring worse. The unemployment rate for women is above 15% at the end of April, and for men, 13% (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Certainly, this will get worse.
Jobs are open here and there, and when hiring happens, and when jobs come back, we cannot abandon the gains we’ve made toward gender equity in hiring. We can’t permit the collective fears of our community to be realized: “many leaders are concerned that the progress that has been made in recent years to center conversations and initiatives around diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) will begin to fall away or be deprioritized in this environment.” (What We’re Hearing From the Field, eJewish Philanthropy, May 11)
Over the past year and a half the Gender Equity in Hiring Project has been advocating for employers to post salary ranges when posting open positions. We believe that this is a diversity, equity and inclusion issue – and a justice issue. Research has demonstrated that doing so is particularly helpful for minority and marginalized candidates, in particular women, people of color, and LGBTQ people looking for jobs. Here is why:
- Transparency and trust are values, and listing salary demonstrates that an organization is transparent about its budget and process. Salary transparency aligns with these organizational values of transparency. Individuals seeking a position prefer to work in organizations that align with their articulated values, and of course, trust their employees, and have transparent budgets, too.
- Using everyone’s time effectively allows the process to move more efficiently. Listing salary ranges helps an organization to limit candidates to the right applicants, not the ones who are expecting to earn many times as much or the ones for whom a position is a giant reach, helping these organizations to save time in the process. A salary range helps a potential applicant to identify a position as “executive level” or “entry level” even if the advertisement does not clarify it as such.
- “Commensurate with experience” is meaningless. Organizations that include this are really expressing that either they haven’t yet decided on a salary, or they’ll choose a salary based on their preferred candidate. This speaks to an internal indecisiveness that should raise red flags for potential candidates, and raises the risk that implicit bias will be engaged in the search process. In addition, this may also be detrimental to women and others who have the experience and expertise deserving of a particular salary, but who may have been systematically held back or marginalized, resulting in reduced rank or prior pay.
- Women are less likely to apply if they feel that they are not just right for the position, or that the organization is not just right for them. Adding a salary range helps everyone of any gender determine if the financial package is right for them, complementing other decisionmaking on the way to determining whether or not they are “right for the position.” The more information any individual has about a particular job in the hiring process, the better the chance that they will be able to make an informed decision.
- But most of all, not listing salary requires women and other minorities to negotiate from a position of weakness, perpetuating and even deepening the pay and equity gap. In many cases, women and other minorities have less experience and different skills in the art of negotiation, and a woman or other minority or marginalized candidate who is forced to negotiate without any salary range data is required to bargain for her salary. Transparent salary ranges posted along with job postings eliminate this concern and help women begin from the same position of strength as their cis-male colleagues.
Right now, in this moment of terrible flux, jobs are disappearing. Unemployment is rising, furloughs and salary reductions are being structured, and budgets are falling, in the Jewish community and well beyond. We are all terribly concerned about the future of work, our economic health as a society, and the equity of and in our community – in addition to our physical and emotional health and safety.
