What We Talk About When We Talk About Pay Inequity<br />But my white male counterparts earn $25,000 to $30,000 more a year than I do.”<br />Ms. Johnson is one of 1,000 women on whose behalf a local union filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2013, claiming<br />that the city paid women and minorities substantially less than their white male colleagues.<br />Early in her career, Jewelle Bickford, now a partner at Evercore Wealth Management, worked at a global bank in New York with a male colleague<br />who was on his best behavior during the first half of the day, she said, but during and after lunch, his work ethic devolved.<br />Though the pay gap has long been in the public consciousness — on average, American women make 80 cents for every dollar men make — three recent<br />incidents have brought renewed scrutiny to an issue many women in the workplace say they continue to confront on an almost daily basis..<br />“I’ve made about 40 percent less than a colleague that’s maybe only a tiny level above me, someone I didn’t report to,” Ms. Keller said.<br />“I was brought up in a culture where it was considered gauche.”<br />“I missed that class,” said Ms. Johnson.<br />They included Gayl Johnson, a director of administration in New York City’s Department of Sanitation; Alix Keller, the director of product technology at Hello Alfred, a home concierge service; Melissa Robbins, a Philadelphia-based political strategist;<br />and Kimberly Webster, formerly a lawyer at a New York firm.<br />Once, she said, she called a supervisor and asked why she was making less than a male counterpart.<br />“When he came back, you would walk by his office, and he would have his head down,” Ms. Bickford said.
