About International Women’s Day
International Women’s dates back to 1908, when 15,000 women marched in New York. They were protesting for improved work conditions (e.g. shorter hours and better pay) and the right to vote.
Now, every year on 8 March International Women’s Day is celebrated around the world.
Salsa’s celebration of International Women’s Day
Firstly, Salsa would like to wish all of our female staff a happy International Women’s Day. Thank you for your strength, wisdom, integrity and leadership. Salsarian women are strong and have a strong voice. Your confidence, advocacy and contribution to society is inspirational. Keep being you!
Salsa’s Gender Equality Policy
Salsa is committed to gender equality and is accountable to this through our value of mutual respect. Salsa recruits, rewards, develops and promotes based on individual performance, capability and potential. Our commitment to equality is real. We are on a journey of continuous improvement. In 2023 we ran a professional development session on the role of unconscious bias. This session gave team members the space to pause and reflect on any unconscious bias they may have. The focus was on becoming more mindful of the words we use, the way we present and the way we interact, and how unconscious bias may make others feel. At Salsa, fresh thinking is another one of our core values — the best ideas win, regardless of gender.
We strive to ensure equity across all areas, including race, gender, ability and age.
Salsa’s gender statistics
One of Salsa’s eight values is transparency. To honour that value and celebrate International Women’s Day, we decided to take a look at two key gender benchmarks for our Australian, NZ and US employees and contractors. The bottom line in terms of gender breakdown in Salsa is:
Salsa: 37% female
Industry: 32% female
Note: For the industry figure, we looked at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) Data . While we couldn’t get an exact match (digital services), the best match was Professional, Scientific and Technical Services/Computer System Design and Related Services, with less than 250 employees. In this subdivision, across all occupations, 32% of people are female and 68% male.
In addition, Salsa has committed to increasing the number of women employed by the company and contributes towards addressing systemic barriers that may prevent women from accessing equal opportunities in employment, including equal pay. One way in which we do this is through our flexible working conditions. Studies have shown that many women want to work full time but the lack of flexibility in terms of hours prevents them from doing so because in most cases they are the primary caregiver. Salsa offers all staff flexible work conditions so that they can be present for those that count most, when it counts most.
One of the key figures that’s getting a lot of attention at the moment is the gender pay gap. New laws that recently came into effect require Australian employers with more than 100 employees to declare their gender pay gap. While Salsa has less than 100 employees, again to reflect our value of transparency and to make sure we’re accountable as we celebrate International Women’s Day, we decided to analyse our salaries to see if there was any gender pay gap. We are proud that our commitment matches reality, and our gender pay gap is actually 8.09% in favour of women. Importantly, we've also done a comparison across like-for-like positions and found equality (no gender gap). However due to the size of our company, publishing this information could identify the personal information of our staff.
Salsa’s gender pay gap is: 8.09% in favour of women
The national average is 21.7% in favour of men
More national statistics can be seen in the screenshot below.
Happy International Women’s Day
Wishing everyone a happy International Women’s Day. Join us in celebrating how far we’ve come since 1908, while acknowledging the work we still need to do. Salsa is committed to continuing to work towards gender equity across the company, and we’re excited to see our gender pay stat trends in the opposite direction to the national picture. Yay, us!