Our 2021/2022 Ireland Gender Pay Gap Report

Inspiration starts with Inclusion

At Pinterest, our mission is to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love. Each month, 400+ million people around the world come to Pinterest to find and do what they love. We’re working hard to create a positive place on the internet and are proud to build personalised and relevant experiences on our platform that help move our diverse population of users from inspiration to action. 

Core to our mission and everything we do is creating belonging. As we continue to grow and evolve, we’re taking meaningful steps to ensure anyone who joins our global workforce, visits our platform, or partners with us feels welcomed, valued, and respected for their individual perspectives and life experiences. 

An important component of inclusion at Pinterest is ensuring employees are appropriately rewarded for their contributions. As an equal pay employer, we focus on ensuring equal pay for equal work. In this report, we’ll examine a distinct but related concept, which is gender pay gaps. The purpose of this report is to provide details on our gender pay gap statistics for Ireland in 2022, explain the reasons for our gaps, and outline measures we are taking to reduce them.

Our approach to fair pay

The gender pay gap is not the same as pay equity. Pay equity is about ensuring that employees who perform comparable work will receive equal pay. Pinterest is an equal pay employer and takes regular steps to ensure that employees are being paid fairly and equitably, regardless of gender or any other protected category.

Compensation at Pinterest includes fixed and variable pay and may include base pay, bonuses/incentive compensation, and equity. In 2021 we increased transparency around compensation ranges and levels and we have continued to refine our internal processes. In a dynamic workplace, maintaining pay equity requires vigilance and ongoing monitoring. Twice a year, we analyse compensation and make adjustments when necessary to continue to stand by this very important commitment.

In this report, we’ll discuss Pinterest’s gender pay gap in Ireland, based on criteria established by the Irish government. The gender pay gap is the output of a statistical calculation comparing the average figures for both the pay and bonus of the total workforce.

Pinterest Ireland 2021/2022 Data¹

Interpreting the Data

The mean (most commonly known as average) gaps are calculated by adding up all values and dividing by how many there are in each data set (ie. the total number of male or female employees). This statistic can be distorted by individual outliers (e.g. low or higher earners) or where a group at either end of the earning scale is predominantly male/female. The median gaps are calculated by placing all values in order and finding the value that sits in the middle.

Median figures are not distorted by outliers (low or higher earners). Neither mean nor median is the “better” statistic. They show different things. The median assists with interpretation of the spread of the data.

Our data shows that we have a mean pay and bonus gap, which means average compensation for women in Ireland is lower than for men. However, we also have a negative median pay and bonus gap, which means the median compensation is actually higher for women than for men. We also have more women than men in the upper two pay quartiles. This suggests that we have strong representation of women in highly compensated roles, but our few most senior, most highly compensated roles in Ireland are currently held by men. 

It’s important to note that our mean pay gap of 12.8% is influenced by a small number of outliers at the senior level in Ireland. With this data excluded, our mean pay gap is 5.9% and our median is -1.0%. Similarly, our mean bonus pay gap of 31.4% reduces to 13.9% and our median bonus pay gap reduces to -28.2% when the same outlier data is excluded. In our view, the pay gap that remains after we remove the outlier data, more accurately reflects our population in Ireland. This remaining pay gap is driven by a small dataset overall and, as we’ve mentioned, a lower representation of women in the few most senior roles within the Ireland organisation. Compensation for these few most senior roles is higher due to a competitive talent market in Ireland. 

We’d also like to acknowledge that our data indicates that women and men are equally benefitting from our market-leading benefits packages.

How we are addressing representation

Although our mean pay gaps are low, our median pay gaps are in favour of women, and our data positions us well against our competitors, we are not complacent. We will continue to invest in local and global initiatives to improve representation, especially at the senior level, including:

• Encouraging more applications from women (including our internal talent) for senior roles:

  • We will review where we advertise our roles and identify how we might be able to get our adverts seen by more women.

  • We will draft all job descriptions using gender neutral language.

  • We will continue to invest in our recently launched Women@ Parent Mentoring program to help re-engage talent and rebuild the careers of those that have had to take extended periods away from work.

  • We will monitor outcomes from our recently launched Personal Leadership coaching pilot in EMEA, which matches 10 women, transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary people with coaches to develop a leadership vision for the next stage of their career and map their professional network to expose gaps in mentorship and sponsorship. All participants must conduct teachbacks to a Pinclusion Group² of their choosing.

  • We will connect with networks focused on women in technology such as “Pyladies Dublin” and “Connecting Women in Tech”.

  • We will continue our focus on the continued development, retention and advancement of our internal talent.

• Mitigate bias in our recruitment process:

  • We will drive balanced gender representation in our pipelines where possible.

  • We will have balanced interview panels where possible.

• We will roll out a globally consistent Interview Training which covers guidelines on I&D and minimising space for bias in the process.

• Our Women@ Pinclusion Group will continue to help drive skill-building, professional development, recruiting and  retention for all women employees.

   

  • Our annual women’s conference is an important opportunity for all employees to learn from women who are influential voices, educators, and creators, around themes such as actionable allyship, personal growth, self-defined success, intersectional experiences, and wellbeing.

We also want to note that this report examines gender gaps with a binary lens – that is, looking strictly at disparities between men and women – given current data constraints. We are exploring expanding how we ask employees about their identities in a voluntary demographics survey subject to compliance with local legal requirements. Our hope is that this will help us better understand pay equity for transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary genders in the future.

This report reflects a great starting point, while also acknowledging that there is still more work that needs to be done. We will continue to identify opportunities to improve our efforts and engage transparently along the way. We are fully committed to providing opportunities for women and all other underrepresented groups at all levels, in all countries, and in all areas of our business.