The 28 companies agreed to review their hiring and promotion processes and embed equal-pay efforts in other workplace initiatives. The companies also include Accenture ACN 0.14% PLC, American Airlines Group Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., CSCO 0.80% Deloitte, Expedia Inc., EXPE 0.21% Gap Inc., GPS 1.50% Johnson & Johnson , L’Oréal USA and Staples Inc., the White House said. “The pledge is to actually take action,” said Tina Tchen, executive director for the White House’s Council on Women and Girls. The Labor Department also is updating guidelines for federal contractors on protecting against sex discrimination for the first time since the 1970s. The changes included adding protections for transgendered individuals. The efforts are part of a major White House summit on women and girls Tuesday that is drawing thousands of people to Washington. The summit will frame President Barack Obama’s two terms as a time of notable progress for women because the president expanded health-care coverage, signed a pay-equity bill and campaigned against sexual violence toward women, among other things. Officials will emphasize that more progress needs to be made to lift women economically and socially, playing into one of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s primary messages to voters this year. Mr. Obama has made improving women’s financial standing a key plank of his White House agenda, emphasizing in speeches that he wants a fairer workplace for his two daughters. Economists and policy makers who support him say his repeated calls for workplace flexibility helped to drive a wave of cultural change inside offices nationwide. The impact of that campaign may exceed that of his few legislative victories on women’s issues. “President Obama was the first president that came into office understanding the relationship between women and work and families, and work fundamentally changed,” said Betsey Stevenson, who served as chief economist at the Labor Department and an economic adviser to the Obama White House. She recalls opting out of a trip with the president so she could take her kindergartner daughter trick or treating-on-Halloween, a decision made easier by Mr. Obama’s call for more family-friendly schedules inside a White House that demands long hours. Broad measures of women’s economic success remain stubbornly low. Female labor-force participation, which peaked in 1999, has declined further since Mr. Obama took office, falling to 57% in 2014 from 59.2% in 2009, Labor Department figures show. Women working full time on average earn 79% of what men do, just slightly more than at the start of this administration. A handful of female-friendly policies were part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, including a ban on insurers charging women higher premiums, and a requirement that employers cover contraception without charging a copayment. The first bill Mr. Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which widened the time window in which to file gender pay discrimination complaints. The administration also extended the minimum wage and overtime pay to nearly two million workers in the home health-care industry, a boost for women since they hold most of those jobs. It raised the minimum wage for workers at federal contractors to $10.10 an hour, part of a broader campaign aimed at lifting the federal minimum wage, which is earned by more women than men. Many of the administration’s legislative efforts on the workplace and economy–such as expanding paid family leave and raising the minimum wage for all workers–died as Republicans took control of one, then both, chambers of Congress. The White House turned to executive actions, such as a recent rule that will require large employers to report salary data by gender. “Even using all the tools at their disposal, the administration alone can’t get things done,” said Victoria A. Budson, executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, who gives the administration an “A” grade for its progress. Asked why fewer women are working today, Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said women’s lagging pay and the lack of paid leave continue to dissuade them. Ms. Stevenson, now an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, said that women bore the brunt of post-recession state and local government job cuts that accelerated at the beginning of this decade. Others noted that men’s wages and employment as well haven’t fully rebounded since the recession. Republicans say that the administration’s moves to expand health care and promote equal pay saddled employers with regulations that work against women. Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said that when she travels her state talking to women, some tell her they are taking second jobs selling cosmetics because they can’t get a raise at the office. “I don’t think that they’ve made any significant changes” to improve women’s financial standing, Ms. Blackburn said of the White House. Liberals are critical of the Obama administration for not going far enough on some issues, including advocating for abortion rights, said Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. But Ms. O’Neill is already looking ahead to the implications of a potential victory by Mrs. Clinton. “She is unabashedly pro-woman,” she said. “We need someone who looks at economic issues with a gender lens.” Write to Janet Adamy at janet.adamy@wsj.com Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
28 companies have committed to a White House pledge requiring them to carry out an annual analysis of their gender pay gaps with the aim of getting rid of inequities. The companies, which include Accenture, Amazon, American Airlines, Cisco Systems, Deloitte, Dow Chemical, Expedia, Gap, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oréal USA, Pepsi Co and Staples, also pledged to examine their hiring and promotion procedures and to promote equality through a variety of other initiatives. The US Labor Department will also revise guidelines on sex discrimination for federal contractors. This will be the first revision since the 1970s and will include protections for transgender people.