Equal pay? There’s an app for that

Published on April 14, 2014

Society

The French Min­istry of Women’s Rights, City, Youth and Sport de­scribes the Lead­er­ship pour elles mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion as a “never-be­fore-seen tool, that is con­ve­nient and free, to help women ad­vance in their ca­reers”. Launched on April 7th, the app was de­vel­oped with the help of the APEC (an or­ga­ni­za­tion spe­cial­ized in the em­ploy­ment of ex­ec­u­tives) and the AGE­FOS PME (an as­so­ci­a­tion that fi­nances vo­ca­tional train­ings for SMBs). Avail­able for free on both the Apple Store and Google Play, it aims to coach women into restor­ing their self-con­fi­dence at work.

As the Min­istry re­port points out « the fact that women are not as self-con­fi­dent as men can ex­plain up to 4,5% of the 25% of the wage gap”. Be­sides “men are 9 times more prone to ask for a pay rise than women”.

To over­come these dis­crep­an­cies, the app de­liv­ers a quick per­son­al­ity test to the user to get an idea of her pro­file. A se­ries of ar­ti­cles and videos are then made avail­able to make the inner leader in every woman grow. This seems like a makeshift so­lu­tion. Wage gaps still amount to24% today while only 26.9% of French MPs are women.

In 2013, the French gov­ern­ment took mea­sures against the busi­ness of more than 50 em­ploy­ees who did not ob­serve the law on pro­fes­sional equal­ity and pe­nal­ized them for the first time. Now it in­tends to mit­i­gate the in­equal­i­ties with the help of tech­nol­ogy. “It’s a coach­ing tool avail­able for every woman” said Najat Val­laud-Belka­cem, who has been Min­is­ter of Women's Rights since May 2012. She was re­cently pro­moted to the role of Min­is­ter of the City, Youth and Sports. So maybe she her­self fol­lowed the ad­vice de­liv­ered by the ap­pli­ca­tion to ask Manuel Valls, the new French Prime Min­is­ter, for a pro­mo­tion.

Translated from Égalité salariale ? Il y a une application pour ça