Level the playing field.
That’s what Adidas is demanding today on Equal Pay Day, which marks how much additional time women had to work this year (100 days) on top of 2017 to match the amount men earned just last year.
As women on average are paid 20 percent less than their male counterparts (with black women and Latinas earning even less), the sportswear giant as well as other companies with equality initiatives, such as Reebok, Lyft and Procter & Gamble, have teamed up with Lean In on #20PercentCounts, the first of three campaigns to raise awareness of the gender wage gap and call for parity in the workplace.
“Closing the gender pay gap is about basic fairness,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In’s founder and Facebook’s COO. “It’s about valuing women’s work and investing in women’s abilities. It’s about supporting the families who depend on women every day. And it’s about building an economy that makes the most of everyone’s talent.”
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Together with major U.S., brands and local businesses in more than 40 cities across the country, the nonprofit organization poses a question to consumers as they make purchases today: What would you do if you were paid 20 percent less? At Adidas, shoppers both in stores and on its e-commerce channels will see the #20PercentCounts theme printed on shopping bags, receipts and more.
“We believe that through sport, we have the power to change lives,” said Karen Parkin, chief HR officer at Adidas. “Equal pay matters, and by eliminating the gender pay gap, we can improve the lives of women and their families.”
On the LeanIn.org website, visitors will be able to explore the numbers behind the gender wage gap through interactive data, and executives can find out what they can do to help gender parity in their own offices. Sandberg’s company and its campaign partners will host the same initiative on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day on Aug. 7 and Latina Equal Pay Day on Nov. 1 — female demographics that face pay gaps of 38 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
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