What’s the solution to ending gender-based pay disparities and all income inequality in the office? For a US programmer named Lauren Voswinkel, a simple way to start is by making it clear what everyone makes. After all, we can’t know we are being paid less unless we know what everyone else is being paid.
面对男女有别的薪酬，或是办公室中的同工不同酬，我们该怎么办？美国程序员劳伦•福斯温克尔认为最简单的办法就是工资完全透明。看不见别人的工资条，我们又谈何知道自己薪酬过低呢？
For years, Voswinkle had no idea she was being underpaid. A software developer from Pennsylvania, it took her three job switches and several hard negotiations before she landed her current position and an annual salary of $122,000 (about 757,000 yuan), a pay rate she now thinks is comparable to her male coworkers.
过去的很多年里，福斯温克尔都不曾意识到自己薪酬过低。这位宾夕法尼亚州的软件开发者换过三次工作，与老板进行过多次艰难的谈判，终于找到了现在这份工作，年薪122,000美元（约合757,000元人民币）。这样的报酬在她看来已经与同等职位的男同事不相上下了。

“I just found myself thinking, how long have I been underpaid? How could I have prevented this? What was I missing?”
“我不由自主地在想自己拿过低的薪水有多久了？我本该怎么做才能拿到和大家一样的薪水？我都错过了什么呢？”
Voswinkel told The Guardian: “And I realized it was mostly because of a lack of conversation around pay.”
福斯温克尔在接受英国《卫报》采访时如是说。她还补充道：“我后来意识到其中很大一部分原因是因为缺乏关于薪酬的沟通。”
On May 1, she shared her salary, job title, and professional experience on Twitter. She also created the hashtag #talkpay to encourage others to do the same.
5月1日，福斯温克尔在推特上晒出了自己的工资、职位以及工作经验，并且打上了#晒工资#的标签，希望人们也能像她一样晒出自己的工资。
In a manifesto she wrote and published on April 28 on tech and culture website ModelViewCulture.com, Voswinkel said she hoped that mass salary disclosures would “break the taboo surrounding salaries, so that people would become more comfortable with discussing pay.”
4月28日，她还在技术、文化网站ModelViewCulture.com发布了一篇声明。她在声明中表示，希望大家都能来晒工资，“打破了不谈薪酬的禁忌，以后讨论起工资来会更自在”。
Although #talkpay has become a trending topic on social media for the past two weeks, most of the posts using the hashtag were simply taking part in the discussion, and did not reveal actual salaries, according to BuzzFeed.
据美国新闻聚合类网站BuzzFeed报道，过去两周，虽然#晒工资#一直高居社交媒体话题榜，但是大部分网友只是参与讨论，真正晒工资的人却少之又少。
Wall of silence
沉默之墙
There are major forces at work protecting the trend of silence when it comes to salary transparency, says Emily Dreyfuss at Wired magazine. Beyond the powerful inertia of maintaining the status quo, there is also fear of retribution from current or future employers and of ruining relationships with current co-workers, she says.
来自《连线》杂志的艾米丽•德赖弗斯表示大多数人的沉默是工资透明的主要阻力。而个中缘由，除了因为惰性安于现状，很多人选择沉默则是因为担心被自己现在或未来的上司报复或是损害同事间的关系。
Company policies can make sharing information about salaries difficult, too. According to The Guardian, pay secrecy policies are common in US workplaces, even though they’re often carried out illegally. With “work at will” laws, which allow employees to be fired at any time for any reason, getting sacked for discussing one’s pay is a real threat. That’s why many of the posts with the #talkpay hashtag were cautionary or filled with concern and no salary details. For Voswinkel, that’s a good thing. “There needs to be a degree of risk,” she told The Guardian. “People need to feel that fear to realize just how much these conversations have been repressed by employers.”
公司的各种规定也让分享工资信息变成难事。据《卫报》报道，工资保密政策在美国公司中十分常见，但它们通常并不合法。美国的劳动法有“任意雇佣原则”，这意味着老板可以随时以任何理由辞退雇员，比如讨论工资，这也成为谈论薪酬面临的真正威胁。因此网上很多人虽然打着#晒工资#的话题发帖，却都小心翼翼、满心担忧，不愿透露自己工资的细节。在福斯温克尔看来，这也不全是坏事，在接受《卫报》采访时，她说：“这种对于风险的普遍认识必不可少，正因如此，人们才能意识到自己在谈薪酬方面被老板打压得有多严重。”
According to an April survey by The Washington Post which polled 1,000 full-time workers in the US, nearly 73 percent aren’t comfortable with the idea of discussing their pay with anyone at work other than their boss or the HR department. Only 13 percent said they’d be “completely comfortable” with sharing such information more broadly, recognizing that it might offer workers better leverage in negotiations. The remaining 14 percent said they would be comfortable discussing their salaries only with close colleagues.
4月，《华盛顿邮报》还对1000名美国全职工作人员进行了调查。调查显示，73%的人不习惯与上司或人力资源部门之外的人谈论工资；仅有13%的人认为与他人分享工资信息“毫无压力”，并将其视为增加薪酬谈判的筹码；剩下的14%则表示，自己仅仅会和关系好的同事聊工资。