On Friday, November 17, Zero Gap officially launched with a party in the Green Room of the War Memorial Opera House. Guests came dressed to impress and mingled over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres before sitting down to honor three special guests at Zero Gap’s annual Power of Parity Awards.
Supervisor Mark Farrell, co-founder of Honeybook Shadiah Sigala, and acclaimed Silicon Valley “whistleblower” Susan Fowler were the award recipients, although Fowler was unable to attend the event. All three received awards for helping gender parity in some way. The awardees were introduced by board members Mira Veda, Sarah Gerber, Schuyler Hudak, and Jonathan Yaffe.
Farrell was awarded the Champion Award due to his two pieces of legislation. The Champion Award is given to a community leader that champions the cause of equality. Farrell’s first piece of legislation centered around increasing female representation in the public sphere after he noted that out of 87 public monuments and memorials in San Francisco, only two depicted real-life women. The second piece of legislation introduced by Farrell prohibits private San Francisco employers from asking for salary history and forbids employers from disclosing any employee’s salary history without that person’s permission. Such disclosures would put women at a disadvantage, Farrell said, because they start off at a lower point (currently women in San Francisco make 84 cents for every dollar that male peers make).
Sigala was awarded the Inclusion Award for her company’s study that analyzed gender income disparities in the creative economy. The Inclusion Award is given to a tech company focused on building parity in the workplace or via products they create. An analysis by the business management platform Honeybook looked at gender disparities in the income of their 50,000 self-employed clients. The statistics revealed that while women have more financial power than at any other point in history (at least in the U.S.), they still are trailing in income, an issue that will hold them back for generations to come. This study was significant because, while many studies have been done on gender income disparity in the general workforce, no one has looked at the disparity in the creative economy.
Lastly, Fowler was awarded the Spotlight Award for her exposition of sexism in the Uber company. The Spotlight Award is given to an individual or organization bringing light to an important area of advancing equality. Fowler posted on her personal blog about the horrific sexism she experienced during her year working at Uber. Her blog post gained a ton of attention, and effectively forced the resignation of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick while also starting a wave of sexual harassment revelations throughout the company. Her heroic and vulnerable post allowed for the exposition of sexist policies within the Uber company and made her a champion of women in the tech industry.
The Power of Parity awards were a wonderful way to launch the nonprofit Zero Gap, and effectively represented Zero Gap’s mission statement: closing the gender gap in workplace opportunity and access by getting 50/50 at the table.
By: Cianna Allen