Social Experiment Asks Children To React To The Gender Pay Gap

“Unequal pay is unacceptable in the eyes of children. Why should we accept this as adults?”

As reported by Ad Week a financial trade union called Finansforbundet released a video that shows how children react when introduced to the concept of a gender pay gap. The video, which you can watch below, was created by the Morgernstern agency and features unscripted responses to a simple example of different pay (using candy!) for the same work.

The kiddos of varying ages are separated into groups of two (one boy, one girl) and asked to clean up some blue and pink balls that have been strewn about the room. Though all of the pairs work together to complete the task, when it comes time for their reward the boys are given substantially more candy than the girls.

At first all of the duos seem to question the discrepancy, with some perhaps thinking it was a mistake, but when an adult in the room informs the girls that they received fewer sweet treats simply because of their gender, the reactions are instantaneous. As a young girl named Felicia puts it while looking at her half-filled cup of candy, “We did the same job, but we didn’t get the same amount.”

“She was just as good as me, so we should get the same reward,” explains a young boy named Ask. “Otherwise it’s unfair.”

Then, seemingly without being prompted and without protesting, the boys share their spoils with their female partners so that each participant receives the same amount of candy.

“Unequal pay is unacceptable in the eyes of children,” the ad concludes. “Why should we accept this as adults?”

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, full-time working women are paid an average of 14.1 percent less than men, with countries such as Japan and Korea boasting a gender pay gap well above 20 percent. While the figure varies from country to country and industry to industry, it’s not hard to see that women are systematically undervalued.

In creating this ad, Finansforbundet hoped to shed a light on just how ridiculous that notion is. “Our job is to look after employees’ rights; therefore it is for us to deal with obvious differences in salary in our industry,” the company’s communications manager, Anne Greva, told Norwegian marketing magazine Kampanje. “We can’t have these inequalities, so we want to take a clear stand.”