Advocacy Group Targets Pay Practices in Fortune 100 Companies

Women’s Prerogative, an online community for women, recently launched a new equal pay campaign aimed at FORTUNE 100 CEOs.

The group is seeking signatures to a petition that urges employers to make sure their pay practices are fair. The petition, which the group plans to send to CEOs on Labor Day, asks them to help close the “gender gap” by insuring their salary, hiring, recruitment and promotion policies are “fair and legal”.

Women’s Prerogative wants employers to conduct a self-audit of their pay practices, and the petition sent to FORTUNE 100 CEOs will include a 10-step equal pay audit form that it says was developed by the Department of Labor in 1996 along with the National Committee on Pay Equity. The steps listed in this document include:

1. 1. Conduct Recruitment Self-Audit

1. 1. Evaluate Your Compensation System for Internal Equity

1. 1. Evaluate Your Compensation System for Industry Competitiveness

1. 1. Conduct a New Job Evaluation System if Needed

1. 1. Examine Your Compensation System and Compare Job Grades/Scores

1. 1. Review Data for Personnel Entering Your Company

1. 1. Assess Opportunity for Employees to Win Commissions and Bonuses

1. 1. Assess How Raises are Awarded

1. 1. Evaluate Employee Training, Development and Promotion Opportunities

1. Implement Changes Where Needed, Maintain Equity and Share Your Success

Who is Women’s Prerogative?
Women’s Prerogative was incorporated in 2003. Its stated mission is to use the Internet in innovative ways to share information with women about issues that matter to them, provide them with a place to talk about those issues, and offer women a way to do something about them. Sharon Levin, who was formerly Counsel at the National Women’s Law Center and has also worked for Congress and the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the group’s Founder and Executive Director. This group has been involved in several advocacy activities that include:

• • Launched a campaign to oppose DOL’s proposed elimination of the Equal Opportunity Survey

• • Partnered with the National Organization for Women and other groups in working for reinstatement of DOL’s Bureau of Labor Statistics collection of the Women Worker data series

• • Partnered with National Women’s Law Center to launch “Women in the Sciences: Left Out, Left Behind,” a nationwide public education and letter-writing campaign addressing the under-representation of women on the science faculties at major research universities

• • Sent a petition to DOL Secretary Elaine Chao on Equal Pay Day last April charging DOL with “quietly walking away” from its initiative on the wage gap. Women’s Prerogative asked Secretary Chao to stop the rollback and specifically:
    • Reinstate the Equal Pay Matters Initiative

• • • Continue Collecting Data on Working Women in the Current Employment Survey

• • • Post Accurate and Complete Information about Equal Pay and Resources on Working Women’s Rights on the Department Website

• • • Aggressively Enforce the Wage Discrimination Laws for Federal Contractors, including circulating the Equal Opportunity Survey to all Federal contractors in the next two years and not unnecessarily limiting the tools available to the department in its enforcement efforts through the Proposed Standards for Systemic Compensation Discrimination under Executive Order 11246.

Threat or Opportunity?
The Women’s Prerogative campaign underscores the continued need for employers to make sure their corporate compensation, hiring, recruitment and promotion practices comply with the law. Employers should expect continued focus and pressure from advocacy groups on these issues.

Updated 2017: Women's Prerogative no longer exists, and documents from their website are no longer available.