Earlier this month, the maybe evil online retailer Amazon found itself under pressure to release details of gender and pay within the company. Amazon’s recently released survey shows that the company pays women and men in the United States virtually the same.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
In its survey, which included its entire U.S. staff including thousands of warehouse workers, Amazon found that women’s compensation in 2015 was 99.9% of men’s in equivalent jobs. Further, minorities make 100.1% of what white workers earn, Amazon said.
Amazon released the information after pressure from Arjuna Capital, one of the company’s shareholders. Arjuna has called on a number of tech companies to release similar information. WSJ reports that Apple and Intel also have good records when it comes to the gender pay gap; at Apple women make 99.6 percent compared to their male counterparts and Intel found no discrepancy.
While women make as much as men at Amazon, the report indicated that women only accounted for 39 percent of the company’s workforce. Further, only 24 percent of Amazon’s management are women. That means a large percentage work at Amazon’s warehouses where workers are paid between $10 and $15 per hour. A 2012 Mother Jones investigation found that the conditions at Amazon warehouses were “surprisingly demeaning and dehumanizing.”
No doubt Amazon’s pay structure is part of its overall attempt to address numerous reports that have painted the company as unfriendly to women. Last year’s New York Times investigation painted a portrait of a corporate culture that is specifically hostile to maternity leave and mothers. Shortly after the story was published, Amazon announced a new parental leave policy that offers workers 20 weeks of paid leave.
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