THE gender pay gap is only widening despite the warm words from companies across the UK on International Women’s Day, the creator of the “Gender Pay Gap Bot” has warned.

The @paygapapp bot automatically scans companies Twitter feeds, and posts their gender pay data alongside any posts which mention International Women’s Day or its associated hashtags, such as #IWD22.

Its posts have been embarrassing for some organisations, highlighting a gender pay gap within the Labour Party in one example.

Francesca Lawson, a copywriter and social media manager, set up the Twitter bot alongside her partner, software consultant Ali Fensone in 2021. But that year was more of a “trial run”, Lawson says.

This year, confident it would work and with a wealth of official UK Government data behind it, the app took off. The bot had around 5000 followers before International Women’s Day on Tuesday. Now, it is approaching a quarter of a million.

Among those are top journalists such as the Guardian’s Marina Hyde, Scottish ministers like Maree Todd and Lorna Slater, and women’s rights organisations such as Engender.

“A couple of big shares on Tuesday morning, and it completely snowballed,” Lawson says.

Tweets from the bot were shared by public figures including the SNP’s shadow chancellor Alison Thewliss, who previously told The National that the “transparency” it provided should help show companies that people expect “deeds, not words”.

That transparency is something Lawson says was a key aim in creating the bot, and she hopes that a wider availability of data going forward might help to shine a light on other pay gaps in society.

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“For instance, the ethnicity pay gap is another huge issue”, she says. “But at the minute we don’t have a handle on how big that issue is as it’s not included in the compulsory reporting in the same way that gender is.

“It’s the same with any social issue awareness event. During Black History Month we’ll see swathes of companies changing their logo, but we don’t have the data to back up their solidarity.”

Lawson said that she would like to see the Government extend the data set to include other protected characteristics “like disability, like race, like sexuality”.

“The more data you have, the more you can quantify the problem and take actionable steps to solve it,” she adds.

Asked if it would consider extending the collection of pay gap data in this way, the UK Government said it was "considering" recommendations on ethnicity pay reporting from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities independent report.

A spokesperson added: “Building a fairer economy means ensuring the UK’s organisations reflect the nation’s diversity in all ways, from gender and ethnicity to sexual orientation."

But for now, the worry is that the gender pay gap’s “direction of travel is not good”.

“From what I’ve seen, there’s been some significant jumps in the gender pay gap over the past couple of years,” Lawson says, “a lot of companies have got worse this year”.

She highlights how one firm, sports retailer Wiggle, which had nearly closed the gap a few years ago, now reports a difference of 48.6%.

“It’s really not looking good. It’s definitely the wrong direction of travel,” Lawson adds.

She says that while the furlough scheme and other Covid impacts could be behind some of the slide, she doesn’t “buy into” it as an argument entirely.