Dive Brief:

• Many companies and governments are seeking ways to eliminate the gender pay gap. One employer in question, tech startup Buffer, provides a totally public list of its entire workforce's salary figures, according to The Atlantic. In addition, Buffer analyzed its pay data to see if a gender gap exists, mainly because transparency has been touted as a way to easily to uncover, and therefore adjust, any imbalances.
• Buffer’s analysis found that women were earning 90 cents for every dollar men earned and noted that their 90% figure is about average for the tech industry in general (though a recent Glassdoor study found, at least on their own site, that the pay differential between male and female computer programmers is very high).
• Courtney Seiter, who manages Buffer’s diversity efforts, told The Atlantic that the company had a "slight feeling" transparency was "an inoculation" from a gender wage gap, but it turned out to be there are other steps required.

Dive Insight:

In this specific case, an employer looks to close the diversity gap and is using transparency on salaries to help it get there, a move some see as inevitable in order to achieve gender equality.

To achieve pay parity, Buffer plans to hire more female developers, especially since developers earn more due to the nature of the job. Like other Silicon Valley startups, Buffer launched with mainly white males in leadership roles. Now, it will "really go that extra distance to find members of diverse groups and people who are good for Buffer," Seiter told The Atlantic.

The Atlantic article notes that Buffer’s study show that while transparency can help a company achieve understanding of the issue, transparency alone falls short. What companies do based on that information is what really matters, says The Atlantic.