Female Quotient CEO Shelley Zalis says there are two things companies can do to close the pay gap via CNBCMakeIt
Companies are under mounting pressure from politicians, regulators and activists to report and narrow gender pay gaps. Business leaders have responded by emphasizing their equity initiatives — from hiring and promoting more women at every level, to less-quantifiable efforts, such as shifting workplace culture.
In an interview with CNBC Make It, Zalis broke down two key ways she thinks companies can tackle workplace inequality: It's illegal for private companies to prohibit employees from talking openly about compensation. But there are still obstacles that discourage employees from talking about pay. Companies can implicitly discourage or even punish employees from discussing money.
Some states have passed laws outlawing wage secrecy, and a few states have even banned employers from asking job candidates to disclose salary history, a question that often puts women and minorities at a disadvantage. In 2014, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited contractors from"retaliating" against employees who talk openly about pay.
Women in middle management positions are more likely than men to leave the workforce to raise their children and care for family members, which means fewer women will fill leadership roles. While women and men start out in equal numbers in the workforce, only 6.4 percent of CEOs at fortune 500 companies are women.
"We need to work on re-writing the rules. There's a mother penalty," Zalis said,"but by creating a mandatory parental leave for both men and women, where parents take the same amount of time off — that would take that bias off the table."
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