Join Us in Hacking the Pay Gap

In honor of Equal Pay Day, the date in the current year that represents the extra days a typical woman working full-time would have to work just to make the same as a typical man did in the previous year, the Department of Commerce, in partnership with the White House’s United State of Women Summit, and the Presidential Innovation Fellows, is issuing a challenge to developers, designers, and technologists. Join us in hacking the pay gap.

The statistics are frustrating and persistent.

• The typical woman working full-time, year-round is paid just 79 cents for every dollar the typical man working full-time, year-round is paid.
• For women of color it’s even worse: 60 and 55 cents for African American and Latina women relative to non-Hispanic white men, respectively.
• Women are overrepresented in the lowest wage professions.
• Motherhood is associated with a wage penalty and lower future career earnings.

#Hackthepaygap is not your typical hackathon -- we want everyone to tackle this important issue. Supported with MIDAAS (Making Income Data Available As A Service) data from the Department of Commerce’s U.S. Census Bureau, we are calling on teams of developers, designers, subject-matter experts, and advocates to develop open source, innovative solutions to hack the pay gap.

Through this data, we want developers and designers to #Hackthepaygap by building tools and visualizations that will increase transparency for women, businesses, and the broader public that could be used in setting negotiating pay.

Participants are encouraged to share their contributions by using the #Hackthepaygap hashtag on Equal Pay Day and invited to attend the #Hackthepaygap hackathon in Washington D.C.

To highlight key gender equality issues and set the agenda for the future, next month, the White House will host a Summit on “The United State of Women” together with the Department of State, the Department of Labor, the Aspen Institute, and Civic Nation. The summit will create an opportunity to mark the progress made by and for women and girls domestically and internationally over the course of this Administration and to discuss solutions to the challenges they still face. The Summit is being held with additional cooperation from Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women, the Tory Burch Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

A handful of outcomes and commitments may be shared and announced in conjunction with the White House’s United State of Women Summit this May.