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Needless to say, her company was not happy.
By Alexandra Blogier — Written on Mar 13, 2023
Gender inequality in the tech industry is an ongoing issue, evidenced by a lack of women in executive leadership roles and the gender pay gap.
Even the federal government is making its own attempts to address the structural inequalities women face in the workplace, declaring March 14th, 2023, as National Equal Pay Day, and acknowledging the role that discrimination plays in the gender pay gap.
One woman experienced pay gap inequalities firsthand and she took to Twitter to share her all-too-common story.
A woman saw her job advertised for more than her salary so she applied.
Kimberley Nguyen realized that her company posted her job on LinkedIn, offering potential applicants $32-90K more than her current salary. In a now-viral tweet Nguyen made on March 7, 2023, she explained that the company where she works as a UX writer posted another UX writer position on LinkedIn, a job Nguyen says she’s “currently doing.”
“Thanks to salary transparency laws, I see that they intend to pay this person $32K-$90K more than they currently pay me, so I applied,” Nguyen tweeted.
According to Nguyen, the company took down the initial LinkedIn post, only to repost it as a separate job posting. Nguyen said that the company defended its actions by “saying it was an internal posting and wasn’t meant for anyone to apply to externally because public companies legally have to post jobs even if it’s an internal conversion.”
Yet Nguyen pointed out “that doesn’t solve the fact that someone internally is now still going to make $32K+ more” than she does for the same level of work. It seems that this isn’t the first time Nguyen has approached her company about the pay gap issue.
“I have also been arguing for months about the pay inequity,” Nguyen stated. “I have told my managers multiple times that I know I’m being underpaid. I have gotten the runaround, as they know they can do this right now in a tough labor market.”
Nguyen noted that her company held a meeting to address the pay gap issue that her tweet highlighted, although, at that meeting, she learned that “nobody is getting a raise.”
“Salary transparency for what?” she asked.
The gender pay gap is an issue that affects women across all industries, not just the tech industry.
According to Forbes, women earned 17% less on average than men did in 2022, making 82 cents to every dollar a man makes. But it’s not just gender that affects women’s salaries– race plays a role, too. Women of Color experience even wider pay gaps than white women do.
A report made by the Government Accountability Office in December 2022, titled Women In The Workforce, analyzed data from the 2021 Census and showed that Black women earned 63 cents to every dollar a white man makes, while Hispanic and Latinx women earned 58 cents to every dollar made by a white man.
The Time’s Up Foundation, an organization that “aims to create a society free of gender-based discrimination in the workplace and beyond,” reported that Native American women earn 57 cents to the dollar and Asian American and Pacific Islander women earn 90 cents to the dollar.
Nguyen said of her company's gender pay gap issue, “I don’t want to hear one more peep out of them about diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
“I don’t wanna see any more of our C-suite execs recommend books for women’s history month,” she continued. “There were tangible actions they could’ve taken and they chose to perform these values.”
Nguyen announced that she’s now seeking other UX writing roles, after tweeting that her company broached the subject of “possible layoffs because what better way to get people to take what they’re given and shut up than to threaten them with job loss?”
She didn’t expect her original tweet to “resonate with so many,” she was “really glad a dialogue is being opened.” Nguyen also mentioned that people could “support [her] through this period of… being egregiously underpaid by buying [her] debut poetry collection” that was published in 2021.
In a sweet silver lining to her story, Nguyen was “absolutely astonished but so grateful” to learn that her poetry collection became a number one bestseller in Asian-American poetry on Amazon.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.