I’m very pleased, surprised, and amused to announce that I’m a finalist in the “Social Impact Award” category of the Analytics and AI Awards this year. The Social Impact Award “recognises an organisation, project or initiative which has utilised data analytics (and/or AI) to the general benefit of society. Social good can include for profit or not for profit initiatives that have had a positive impact on society or have helped to address a social issue to improve the lives of those impacted.“
Why am I surprised? Well, I didn’t think my submission would go anywhere – trying to get any sort of recognition for PayGap is a very new adventure for me, and one I’m still learning to be comfortable with. Through conversations with other activists, I’ve realised that in order to continue to put pressure on the government to really solve these issues, I need to get the site out there even more, until it becomes too loud for them to ignore. You can consider this my first tentative step in doing so.
Why amused? Because every other finalist is an actual company, and I’m just me, tapping away on a laptop and doing my best to leave the world better than I found it. It hasn’t escaped my attention that most of the other finalists are, themselves, represented on my own website, and that has me chuckling away a lot this week.
Industry awards often highlight the headline efforts of companies, the things that appear in their gender pay gap reports as evidence that they are a progressive company, or on their recruitment website to attract new candidates. What my efforts with PayGap.ie have shown is that, while many companies may have some of these initiatives, many of them are little more than a token effort. When you look at the numbers themselves, we see that many companies in Ireland still have very poor representation of women at senior levels, for example, or significant bonus gaps.
Awards like this can garner a lot of positive publicity for a company, especially if they win. I can’t help but wonder how things might change if companies received the same degree of publicity for their gender pay gap reports.