The Page Gap - Making the pay gap history

The pay gap can seem like an intangible thing, making it hard to talk about, and hard to stop; we wanted to create a physical object that made it more tangible. So we created a beautiful diary with 7 weeks defaced with a ‘Not Paid’ stamp, creating a page gap that overtly shows the gender pay gap – The 7 weeks of the year that women in all OECD countries work unpaid relative to men. The diary was created as an object of cultural significance and was given to influential women to empower them to speak up and make the pay gap history.

On March 8th, International Women’s Day, the diary was sent to a carefully selected list of high profile women, who we knew could effect change -feminists, writers, business women, librarians - People who could help to make the pay gap history. Enclosed was a bookmark reading “It’s not too late to achieve what you want in 2018”. The back of the bookmark had a rallying call to make this achievement equal pay. We opted for sending a smaller number of premium bespoke diaries to key women, as we wanted the diary to be something these influential women would use, constantly reminding them to take action to make the pay gap history.

The diary made history and has been archived in The Library of Congress as a piece of cultural history – marking hopefully the last year that the pay gap is 7 weeks. Numerous press outlets picked up the idea including Little Black Book, Ads of the World and The Drum. We also got women of power talking on social media with Instagram stories and posts from high profile female writers, journalists and business women.