Equal Pay App Challenge

The Department of Labor and the National Equal Pay Task Force have launched a contest to challenge developers to create an app that educates users about the pay gap and promotes equal pay.

About the Equal Pay App Challenge

Nearly 50 years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, on average women are still paid less than their male counterparts for doing comparable jobs – that’s called the pay gap. It means that each time the average woman starts a new job, she’s likely to start from a lower base salary, but it also means that over time the pay gap between her and her male colleagues is likely to become wider and wider.

For the average working woman, the pay gap means $150 less in her weekly paycheck, $8,000 less at the end of the year, and $380,000 less over her lifetime. For women of color and women with disabilities, the disparity is even bigger.

Your challenge is to use publicly available labor data and other online resources to educate users about the pay gap and to build tools to promote equal pay.
Each submission should achieve at least one of the following goals:

• Provide greater access to pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity:

These features should provide data that would be helpful to women throughout their careers as they negotiate starting pay, request a promotion or a raise, or consider switching fields to a more lucrative career path. Participants must ensure that their submission complies with all applicable laws and regulations.

• Provide tools for early career coaching:

These features should use publicly available data to create an interactive online experience to educate young women on the pay gap and enable informed decision- making when selecting a career path.

• Help inform negotiations:

These features should provide feedback, tips, and critiques that guide users through the process of negotiating starting salary, pay rate, job level, or requesting a promotion or raise. These tools should also educate individuals about their legal rights.

• Promote online mentoring:

These features should expand individuals’ access to broader communities and mentorship opportunities by providing a means to connect with others for career guidance.

[Source: http://equalpay.challenge.gov/details/about]

Detailed information and submission guidelines for the Equal Pay Gap Challenge are available at http://equalpay.challenge.gov .

Also, you can read more about the app challenge in the Labor Department's press release.