Paid In Semi Full

The gender wage gap is illogical and economically damaging— and not just to women. Some companies are actually trying to fix it.

- Claire Suddath

At Citigroup Inc.’s annual meeting in New York City in April, after Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat had summarized the company’s activities over the past year—1 million cardholders added! $23.6 billion in climate-change-reducing investments!—Citi Chairman Michael O’Neill gestured to two microphones placed in the audience and invited shareholders to speak. This was Natasha Lamb’s cue. She stepped to the mic.

Lamb is a 34-year-old managing partner at the Boston investing company Arjuna Capital. Her investing philosophy at Arjuna, which calls itself an “enlightened” firm with a $200 million portfolio, is that environmental sustainability and social equality lead to long-term profitability. For the past year she’s been systematically submitting shareholder proposals on behalf of Arjuna’s clients, first to nine tech companies and then to six banks, asking them to analyze and make public any differences in the salaries of men and women they employ. The week after the Citigroup meeting, Lamb planned to make a similar presentation at American Express Co. The annual meetings of Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Mastercard, and JPMorgan Chase would soon follow.

Shareholder proposals to Citigroup are limited to 500 words, and Lamb had only a few minutes to state her case. She started by reciting statistics: A study by the job-search website Glassdoor showed that even when accounting for education and experience, women in finance make about 6.4 percent less than men with the same jobs. At Citi, specifically, the crowdsourced compensation data company PayScale Inc. put that number at 6.1 percent. Would Citigroup prepare a public report on any pay gap the company may or may not have?