We tied our pricing to the gender pay gap. Sharing the number and the reasoning in case it's useful to anyone thinking about the same stuff.
I run a US-based/fractional executive assistant staffing company, women-owned, and last year we made two pricing decisions I keep getting asked about, so I figured I'd write them down somewhere public in case they're useful to anyone else thinking through similar issues.
Most of what gets written about the gender pay gap is aimed at Fortune 500s or governments. Useful, sure, but not exactly actionable when you're a small-ish business owner trying to decide what to charge. I wanted something we could actually do at our size.
So we anchored two decisions to one stat. McKinsey estimates women in the US won't reach pay parity with men until 2072. That's not a typo. 2072.
First one: every woman in a leadership role gets a standing 20.72% discount on our EA support. We could have rounded to 20%. But we didn't, and the odd number turned out to be my favorite part - roughly every person who sees it asks why it's 20.72 and not 20, which hands me a thirty-second window to explain exactly what it's tied to. A nice way to get the word out.
Second one: most of our EAs are women, and a lot of them are moving into this work from a completely different career. We price their support at $45/hour. That number does two things at once. It's low enough that more leaders can actually afford to bring on help, and it's sustainable enough that more women can build a real career in the field instead of treating it as a side gig.
None of this is charity and both decisions make plain business sense for us. They just also happen to say what we care about out loud, where a customer can see it. Our prices are one of the few places that we can make our values visible.
If anyone's built something similar into how they price or operate, I'd genuinely love to hear it. I love both of our initiatives but also want to find more!
(If you know anyone who needs an EA or is looking to break into the EA career, please DM me and I'd love to help them out)