British companies posting messages for International Women’s Day are having their gender pay gaps exposed by a Twitter bot, leading some to delete their posts.
Companies such as Ryanair, Barclays and outsourcer Capita, as well as universities and government departments, have been called out by the Gender Pay Gap Bot, which states in its Twitter biography: “Employers, if you tweet about International Women’s Day, I’ll retweet your gender pay gap.”
The cover photograph on the account reads: “Deeds not words. Stop posting platitudes. Start fixing the problem.”
One of the bot’s tweets
When a firm posts a tweet that contains any International Women’s Day hashtags, the bot automatically responds with its median gender pay gap, which is calculated using openly available data from the government. The worst offenders include