Girls Get Fewer Treats in Pay Gap Trick

Kansas City-based creative agency Barkley has used Halloween to illustrate how unfair the gender pay gap is using kids’ favourite currency – candy. The work supports the Women's Foundation and the American Association of University Women (AAUW), which takes on the wage gap with a salary negotiation training initiative.

"Why do da boys get all da big ones and da girls get de wiggle ones?", complains a young tot on being presented with half a paltry chocolate bar as opposed to the abundant giant jelly sweets her male co-trick-or-treaters are offered. Quite so, young lady, quite so.

Children are the leading experts in fairness and A Scary Truth: The Wage Gap cleverly underlines the injustice of pay disparity when we see the flummoxed and outraged tots reacting to girls getting way less candy than the boys.

“They’re both people, they should get the same amount.” says one girl commenting on oversized lollipops being given only to the boys. 

When the trick-or-treaters showed up at the Scary Truth house, the boys were given more and better candy than the girls. The confused little 'uns were offspring of Barkley employees and friends who were invited to participate in the trick-or-treating experiment without knowing its purpose.

The candy disparity illustrates the gender pay gap, where, in the US, women are paid an average of 80 cents for every dollar paid to a men. For women of colour, the average is far less.

In the UK, this April's Gender Pay Gap Report found that almost eight in 10 companies and public-sector bodies pay men more than women, with women being paid a median hourly rate that, on average, was 9.7% less than that given their male colleagues.

“Our hope is that we can play a small part in getting a generation of women the tools they need so these little girls grow up and never hear the term ‘wage gap,’” comments Katy Hornaday, ECD of Barkley.