In Ireland and all OECD countries the pay gap is 14%. This means that women essentially work unpaid for 7 weeks of the year relative to their male counterparts. It was noted by Jo Cribb, Chief Executive of the Ministry of Women, in her Ted Talk ‘Silence is fuelling the gender pay gap’. Our campaign aimed to overtly highlight the pay gap to key women of influence in a tangible way, empowering them to break the silence and make the pay gap history.

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The diary made history and has been archived in The Library of Congress as a piece of cultural history – marking hopefully the last year that the pay gap is 7 weeks.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.

The target audience for this idea was limited but pointed. The diaries were sent to key women in powerful positions with a known passion for women’s rights who could spread the word about the 7 week pay disparity and help to make the pay gap history. We knew if we could get the diaries to them and help them to feel empowered, they could affect change in an authentic way.

In a year where many women’s issues are finally being brought to the fore, on International Women’s Day our company wanted to use our advertising skills to shine a light on an issue that still remains hush hush on a peer to peer level – the gender pay gap. Our brief was to empower influential women to confine the pay gap to history books not pay cheques.

Our objectives were 1) To drive awareness and talkability around the 7 week pay disparity, which we calculated to be the number of weeks women in all OECD countries work unpaid relative to men. 2) To create an object of cultural significance around the gender pay gap to help make this intangible topic more tangible.