When i was still working in corporate America, it was pretty clear to me that discussing how much i was being paid with my co-workers was a big taboo. And i understood why: If we don’t know each other’s pay, we don’t know if the pay we’re receiving is fair. A recent fact sheet from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research supports this contention:

While there is no direct link between pay secrecy and pay inequality, some evidence suggests that pay transparency reduces the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap for all full-time workers, based on median annual earnings, is 23 percent (IWPR 2011). In the federal government, where pay rates are transparent and publicly available, the gender wage gap is only 11 percent (GAO 2009). It is estimated that discrimination (rather than differences in occupations, industry, experience or education) is responsible for about 40 percent of the wage gap (Blau and Kahn 2007).

Just how much secrecy is there? IWPR found that overall almost half of all workers don’t divulge how much they’re paid either because they are explicitly forbidden or strongly discouraged to do so. This secrecy is much more prevalent in the private sector: There over 60% of workers cannot discuss their pay. Compare that with around 14% in the public sector! In fact, 65% of public employees report that their pay information is readily available to the public.

As long as such secrecy is upheld, it is difficult to enforce laws against pay discrimination since it is up to workers to make the legal system aware of discrepancies. Maybe this is another taboo worth breaking since it doesn’t benefit those of us who are being paid…