The World’s Best Bar 2019, sponsored by Perrier, used the busy holiday period to draw attention to pay inequality by adding a ‘men’s tax’ to all cheques over a 10-day period and donating the contributions to a charity supporting homeless women. Watch the video below for a behind-the-scenes look at how it went…
If the global pay gap continues to close at the current rate, it would take 202 years to achieve worldwide parity between men’s and women’s salaries, according to the World Economic Forum. In the United States, women are, on average, paid 21% less than men and the gap is not decreasing quickly enough, according to Dante’s co-owner, Linden Pride. “This is an area where the hospitality industry can be leading from the front,” he says. “We shouldn’t be focussing backwards on negativity, rather doing what we can to showcase female talent. The last few years have been fantastic, with female leaders really coming to the fore in bars.”
“I was hugely inspired by Daniela Soto-Innes’ speech at The World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony [accepting The World’s Best Female Chef award], where she spoke about how she treats her team and guests like family with positive words about how the industry is becoming more welcoming,” says Pride. “I looked at our own business and it resonated. We take people’s coats, we make them feel at home, we offer them a drink. It’s a caring perspective that we are trying to enact, and our female staff are key in delivering the level of hospitality we aspire to create.”
For a 10-day period, Dante in New York – which in October 2019 reached the No.1 spot in the list of The World’s 50 Best Bars – added an optional charge of 21% to all cheques, highlighting the fee in pink on the receipt and providing a leaflet to showcase more information. It also installed CCTV cameras to capture guests’ reactions – see the video below for the footage.
Using statistics from 2019 across the world which combine all industries, Laos in South East Asia is the closest nation to achieving pay parity, with women earning 91% of what men receive. Iraq and Syria have the most pronounced pay difference, with women receiving around 30% of men’s salaries. If the closure of the pay gap continues at the current rate, France is expected to achieve parity first, in 22 years’ time. It is predicted that only 15 countries worldwide will close the gender pay gap within the next 50 years.
For the Dante initiative, servers took the opportunity to explain what and why they were doing to anyone who asked why they were being asked to pay the extra sum. “Of course, we were doing it to be provocative,” says Pride. “The vast majority of people were happy to pay it – 87% of guests over the 10 days paid the fee. One person was so impressed, he even donated an extra $200 to the cause.” Although, as the numbers suggest, the reactions weren’t entirely positive. “One guy got very upset about it. He told us ‘it was a guaranteed way to lose clientele’ and started attacking us pretty hard on Insta. To me, this illustrated exactly why we were doing it.”
Many other venues in The World’s 50 Best Bars family weighed in with their support by re-posting Dante’s campaign, including Carnaval in Peru (No.13), Guilhotina in Sao Paulo (No.15), Salmon Guru in Madrid (No.19) and Maybe Sammy in Sydney (No.43).
Dante matched customer contributions dollar for dollar for the 3,500 guests who paid the fee over the course of the experiment, raising $8,353 for charity The Shoebox Project, which distributes gift-filled shoeboxes to women impacted by homelessness.
Header image, clockwise from left: Dante's owners, Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson; Negroni Bianco; Dante's facade; Garibaldi; the classic bar
Now watch the video that Dante created to showcase its equal pay campaign:
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