Gender Pay Gap Bot Goes Viral After Exposing UK Brands in International Women’s Day

(Photo : Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP) (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)
A Twitter gender pay gap bot has gone viral on social media as it continues to expose companies who are posting about and celebrating International Women's Day despite paying females less than males. The owners of the account made the bot in an attempt to call out companies and make them accountable.

A gender pay gap bot has gone viral on social media platforms after exposing UK brands that posted and celebrated International Women's Day but were paying their female employees less than their male counterparts.

The lowly Twitter bot has struck fear into the hearts of CEOs by exposing corporate hypocrisy, leaving a trail of carnage through this year's International Women's Day celebrations. The Gender Pay Gap Bot, @PayGapApp, posted in one tweet that Boux Avenue, a chain of lingerie stores based in the United Kingdom, pays women 59% lower hourly rates compared to men.

Gender Pay Gap Bot

The Twitter bot was released this week and has resulted in brutal posts that called out organizations who were proudly celebrating their support of female empowerment and sharing photos of smiling workers with inspiring statements. However, the bot showed the shadowy truth of the companies' gender pay gap.

The list of companies that the viral bot exposed was long and distinguished and included UK revenues and customs and several government departments and agencies. Some of the companies were Barclays Bank, British Transport Police, dozens of universities, schools, councils, and charitable trusts, as per ABC.

The owners of the Twitter bot were identified to be Francesca Lawson and Ali Fensome, both 27 years old. On Tuesday morning, their gender pay gap bot only had 2,000 followers after it was created last year. It was designed to use government data on British companies' gender pay gaps.

Fensome is a software developer who built the account by writing code that leads it to perform the function listed in its Twitter bio: "Employers, if you tweet about International Women's Day, I'll retweet your gender pay gap." The bot had gone viral by the end of the day on IWD, gaining more than 120,000 followers.

According to the Washington Post, the bot had also sent out hundreds of tweets, calling out companies about their hourly median gender pay gaps. Many social media users praised the bot's efforts, with one calling it "brilliant" and saying that the public needed more accountability from companies, arguing it was the only way that change was going to happen.

Exposing Company Hypocrisy

However, the bot's data is limited only to organizations that are based in the UK and are able to perform its function because companies that employ at least 250 workers are required to report data about their gender pay gap by law. If a company fails to publish this information, it could face court orders and fines.

The data gathered is posted on the UK government's gender pay gap database where anyone is free to browse through companies and see how much the pay difference is between male and female employees or vice versa.

Lawson said that the couple was inspired to create the bot after she worked as an in-house social media manager and was asked by her bosses to make posts on what the company was doing for women's equality whenever an event such as IWD came around. At the time, she said that while writing the statements, none of them were true, Fortune reported.