What Fintech Platform MoneyLion Hopes To Gain By Bringing Attention To The Gender Pay Gap

Despite narrowing, the gender pay gap remains an issue in America. According to the Pew Research Center, women workers earned 15 percent less than men in 2018. Benzinga has partnered with personal finance app MoneyLion's PaveTheWage campaign to bring attention to the gender pay gap.

In 1921, the National Women’s Party began campaigning for an amendment to the constitution that would guarantee women the same constitutional rights as men.

It took 51 years, but in 1972 the U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. That vote took place almost exactly 49 years ago, and while progress has been undeniably made, there’s still a long way to go. (The ERA itself embodies this—after nearly four decades, its ratification in 37 states is still short of the 38-state threshold needed to secure an amendment to the constitution.)

Take the gender pay gap, for example. The systemic causes of something like that—including, but not limited to, education level, work experience, and gender discrimination—have made it so that women still earn less than men for the same work after nearly 100 years of campaigning for equal rights.

In 2016, the most recent year for which we have data, the Census Bureau found that women who worked year-round full-time earned about 17 percent less than men in the same situation. Though that represents a 2 percentage point decrease from 2016, it’s still a shockingly high number.

“There’s unfortunately not any one answer to that question,” said Sruthi Lanka, head of strategic finance for MoneyLion, a personal finance app. “If we had the answer to why, we’d be a lot farther along. We have come some way from a few decades ago, but we’re still not there.”

In many cases, it’s been up to individual companies to address the issue. But fixing something as complicated as the gender pay gap has proven complicated, as numerous companies have shown. Alphabet Inc. GOOG company Google, which has done a gender pay study every year since 2012, recently found they were paying women more than men for similar work. And yet, the company’s leadership team is almost entirely male.

Lanka is hoping campaigns like MoneyLion’s “PaveTheWage” pledge will bring attention to the continued struggle to narrow the gap. Until the end of the month, MoneyLion is giving users who create a MoneyLion Checking Account an extra 17 percent of their deposit, for a total contribution of up to $3 million. Individuals can get up to $599.

“Even though it’s been over 50 years, we’re still seeing this disparity in pay,” said Samantha Roady, president of retail for GAIN Capital and MoneyLion board member. “We want to make an impact on people’s financial lives, and this felt like a very natural extension of that mission, which is to address a very important issue in the U.S. that impacts our members directly.”

More than half of MoneyLion’s members are women, according to Lanka. And while MoneyLion acknowledges the limits of one campaign, they’re hoping it will continue to drive the conversation.

“This is a single test. It’s not going to solve the problem, but it is bringing awareness,” Roady said. “Hopefully it starts a conversation between our members and gives them the confidence to have a conversation with their employers, children, peers. Hopefully, that is the way we can continue to improve on this issue.”