Mayor Walsh & Boston Women’s Workforce Council Release 2016 Gender Wage Gap Report; New Partnership with BU
Thursday, January 5, 2017 – Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Boston Women’s Workforce Council (BWWC) released the 2016 gender wage report and announced a new academic partnership with Boston University, where the BWWC will now be hosted within the BU Hariri Institute for Computing.
For the past three years, Hariri Institute researchers and software engineers from the University’s Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL) have worked with the BWWC to develop a secure software platform that uses privacy-preserving analytics to enable aggregation and detailed analysis of real wage data. The 2016 report leveraged the wage data of more than 112,000 employees – representing 11% of the Greater Boston workforce and $11 billion in annual earnings – to construct a comprehensive outlook on the wage gap in Boston and establish a baseline for future progress.
The gender wage gap report found a 23 cent wage gap, meaning women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns in Greater Boston. The average total annual compensation for women was $78,954, while the average total annual compensation for men was $103,155. In addition, the report found men’s pay was composed of performance pay: men’s total pay was 88% annual compensation and 12% performance pay. Women’s total pay was 95% annual compensation, and 5% performance pay.
The aggregation tool, created by the SAIL team and computer science researchers at BU, is a first-of-its-kind secure multi-party computation platform. Software engineers and student interns designed and prototyped a data analytics platform that allows Boston’s 100% Talent member companies to participate in a process that yields aggregate pay analytics using highly confidential payroll information from each of the participating companies. The platform is unique in that it enables the computation of aggregate pay equity analytics without the risk of revealing any sensitive, company-specific information to any party involved in the process, whether that party is another 100% Talent member company, the BWWC, or BU (the platform owner and operator).
In line with its commitment to investing in long-term solutions, the BWWC also announced its new academic partnership with Boston University, which will host the BWWC at the Hariri Institute for Computing. Institute Founding Director and Professor of Computer Science, Azer Bestavros, notes that the “partnership is a natural outgrowth of our collaboration with the BWWC to develop the software platform for privacy-preserving analytics used in the 2016 gender wage report.” He also cites the importance of bringing computer scientists and social scientists together to pursue ground-breaking, data-driven research.
A recent Huffington Post article highlighted the BWWC’s work and the growing action from state and local governments in advancing gender pay equity, especially in light of a changing federal landscape. While the gap between women and men’s pay has remained at 79.6 cents to the dollar for over ten years, recent city and state-led initiatives that address career track channeling, require equal pay for “substantially similar” work, and prohibit employers from asking about salary history are paving the way for continued progress.
Moving forward, Bestavros sees the partnership between BU and BWWC to allow for “developing more sophisticated analytics that identify more precisely the root causes of pay disparities and by quantifying the impact of best practices used for mitigation purposes.” Led by SAIL Director, Andrei Lapets; Senior Software Engineer, Frederick Jansen; and Co-Director of the University’s Center for Reliable Information Systems and Cyber Security, Mayank Varia, the team will continue to collaborate with the BWWC on improving the platform and incorporating the latest results and techniques adapted from research communities working in secure computing and cryptography.
[Boston Women’s Workforce Council 2016 Report]
[Huffington Post Gender Pay Gap Action article]
About the Hariri Institute for Computing
An incubator in a university setting, the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering initiates, catalyzes, and propels collaborative, interdisciplinary research and training initiatives for a better society. The Institute includes several centers, initiatives, and labs within the University that tackle challenges spanning the fields of data science, cyber security, and cloud computing.
About the Boston Women’s Workforce Council
The Boston Women’s Workforce Council is a public-private partnership between Mayor Walsh and the Boston Businesses Community to close the gender wage gap and make Boston the premier place for working women. So far 179 companies have signed on to the 100% Talent Compact, committing to report wage data anonymously and discuss best practices to retain and promote women in the workforce.