Closing the Gap: introducing a more equitable pay scale

The new strategy marks a radical shift in our pay structure that used to be based on the local cost of living and resulted in unacceptable pay gaps among our global team members. Women on Web’s team is globally distributed, and over half of our team members are a part of our “Help Desk” team which works directly with individuals seeking abortion care, connecting with them in their own language and with knowledge of their local contexts.

In the last couple of years, our teams have expanded and have become increasingly distributed across the globe. We have recruited from new locations to strengthen our international abortion service and advocacy work. This rapid growth has surfaced debates around equitable compensation, pay transparency, diversity, and inclusion.  Our team voiced that our old pay structure wasn’t working and the tools that we were using to calculate differences in pay were not reflecting the real expenses associated with living in their location. 

Evaluating our compensation model

Last year we began looking for the right partners to evaluate our compensation policies and co-develop a new, more equitable pay scale for Women on Web. We began our collaboration with Open Seat in July 2023 with a focus on improving compensation equity, in particular between team members living in different locations. Their team worked with our core project team to create an inclusive, transparent process to:

1. 1. 1. Holistically evaluate full team experiences with compensation from the organization using a survey
      2. Share survey outputs transparently while maintaining confidentiality and transparency; and
      3. Convening small group discussions across time zones, full team meetings, and 1:1s when needed to understand the different ways we could improve equity in compensation and how those actions might impact the full team. When we needed to pivot our original process, we collaborated with the full team to ask what next steps would work best for them, and then chose the path that seemed the best fit for the full team.

Going into the exercise, we were not expecting that at the end of it, we would be providing the same pay for the same role. We were used to adjusting rates based on location and we thought we just needed a better formula to do so. However, wild fluctuations in costs across countries and hyperinflation in some contexts continued to make our calculations unreliable and unrealistic. Based on the input we received from our team, we also realized that it was impossible to adjust for every single criteria that was important to them. And, we learned from vetted economic data that if our goal was purchasing parity across geographies, pay rates needed to be far closer than is the global convention.

As the project progressed more, we began to realize that the most equitable pay structure would likely be to introduce flat pay within each role and trust our team to make their own decisions about how they want to spend their income. We were also confronted by the fact that maintaining pay differences between the Global South and North was in conflict with our goal to build and retain teams with diverse experiences and locations, fostering a culture of care and respect and listening and acting in solidarity with each other. 

Key learnings

In the end, the pay equity project was also a testament to the power of transparency. Consistent transparency was the key to moving forward with integrity, giving our team a voice, and ultimately letting each team member make an informed decision about whether this is the right choice for them. The compensation package that we have now is not perfect, but it is our current best attempt to listen to our team members, enable them to shape the process, and let pay equity and our values guide our strategy and not the other way around. 

Abortion work and activism is chronically underfunded, volatile, and characterized by low pay and volunteer work, this is our attempt to challenge this and show an alternative. While this solution is by no means perfect and we may find adjustments are needed down the road, it is a meaningful step forward and represents increases for a large percentage of the team. It was also meaningful because, working with Open Seat as collaborators, we co-designed a process with staff that they said would work well for them so every team member could show up authentically and unfiltered. This is also in line with our values and how we want to trust our team and leave space for their unique wisdom.

We’d be delighted to chat with any other organization in the repro or abortion spaces looking to tackle a similar challenge. You can reach the Women on Web team at venny@womenonweb.org