The salary transparency conversation nobody wants to have

Tasnima Zerin | Published: January 24, 2026 22:13:15

We discuss everything at work— office politics, weekend plans, relationship drama, even deeply personal health issues. Mention your actual salary, and suddenly everyone's staring at their shoes like you just asked them to explain cryptocurrency to their grandparents. A colleague earns 30 per cent more for doing the same job? You would never know. Your company underpays women systematically? The numbers stay locked in HR's filing cabinet.
In our country, the salary taboo is not just a workplace problem but woven into our social fabric. People do not discuss money with friends, family, or even siblings. Asking someone their salary feels almost offensive, like you have violated an unspoken code about privacy and respectability. We have been trained from childhood that talking about money is crude, inappropriate, somehow beneath us. This cultural conditioning serves a purpose, just not yours.
Companies benefit massively from salary opacity because when employees cannot compare compensation, they cannot identify discrimination, cannot negotiate effectively, and cannot demand fair treatment. The awkwardness you feel when someone mentions their salary is not some natural human response but a carefully cultivated strategy. Nearly half of all full-time workers in the United States reported being discouraged or banned from discussing wages in 2017 and 2018. Women faced these restrictions more often, with 52.2 per cent working under pay secrecy policies, and they violated these policies more frequently than men because they understood instinctively that silence perpetuates inequality.
Locally where most online job postings leave salary expectations blank or simply say "negotiable" without any range, the information asymmetry becomes even more pronounced. Fresh graduates apply for positions with no idea whether the role pays Tk 25,000 or 60,000 monthly. They surrender their entire work history whilst companies reveal nothing about compensation until after multiple interview rounds, if ever.
The global shift Bangladesh is missing: Fifteen states across the United States now mandate salary disclosure in job postings, with five more implementing laws in 2025 alone. The European Union's Pay Transparency Directive requires member states to implement comprehensive transparency measures by June 2026. Countries including Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Japan have enacted various forms of pay reporting legislation.
Research examining these transparency laws reveals remarkable consistency. Canadian university faculty salaries studied after pay disclosure laws found gender pay gaps reduced by 20 to 40 per cent. The United Kingdom's public reporting requirement closed 19 per cent of the gender pay gap. Denmark's law reduced the gap by 7.0 per cent and simultaneously decreased overall wage costs by 2.8 per cent without harming firm profitability.
Bangladesh presents a complex picture on gender pay. World Bank data from 2022 shows men earn 35.8 per cent more per hour than women on average, with the gap widening to 57.2 per cent in agriculture. Research indicates women earn about half as much as men for the same work, particularly in informal markets where a male construction worker makes one and a half times more than his female counterpart. The World Economic Forum's 2025 Gender Gap Report noted Bangladesh made significant progress in political representation but economic participation remains constrained by occupational segregation, discrimination in hiring, and women's underrepresentation in decision-making roles.
Transparency exposes disparities that companies would prefer to hide, and once exposed, public scrutiny forces correction. Women gained information that enabled better negotiation, companies proactively reviewed compensation practices, and the combination of disclosure, accountability, and enforcement proved effective where abstract commitments to equality had achieved nothing.
Why every argument against transparency falls apart: Privacy concerns are misplaced because salary information relates to institutional policy, not personal circumstance. Knowing that your colleague earns more reveals how your company values different work, not anything about their private life. The discomfort comes from exposed inequality, not violated privacy.
Workplace tension is real but misdirected. Discovering pay disparities creates tension because the tension already existed in unjustified inequality. Transparency merely makes visible what was already present. The alternative is enforced ignorance where some employees unknowingly subsidise others.
The flexibility argument might be the weakest. Companies claim they need discretion to reward performance and retain talent, but this discretion consistently produces gender and racial pay gaps that persist across industries. The flexibility they defend is the flexibility to discriminate, whether intentionally or through unconscious bias.
Monster's 2025 survey found that 44 per cent of recent graduates would withdraw from interviews if salary information was not disclosed. Companies resisting this trend will struggle to attract talent that views salary secrecy as a red flag.
What Bangladesh needs: True transparency demands detailed disclosure: actual salary data by role, level, department, and demographic group, not hypothetical ranges. Companies should be required to explain disparities, not merely report them. If women earn less than men in the same role, justification based on legitimate factors like experience or performance must be provided, and if no legitimate justification exists, correction should be mandatory and timely.
Bangladesh currently has no pay transparency laws despite being one of the largest labour exporters globally. Job postings routinely omit salary information, forcing candidates to waste time going through interviews for positions they might never accept at the offered rate. The government should consider enacting specific legislation requiring pay range disclosure to avoid labour exploitation.
For employees, the path forward involves talking to colleagues about money, particularly across gender lines. This fear is not irrational given our cultural conditioning, but submission to it perpetuates the system that harms you. For employers, genuine commitment means auditing current pay practices, identifying unjustified disparities, and correcting them proactively rather than waiting for complaints.
The resistance to salary transparency reveals how deeply we have accepted arrangements that serve institutional power over individual fairness. We have been trained to view discussing our compensation as inappropriate, unprofessional, even shameful. This training serves employers brilliantly because it prevents collective bargaining and maintains information asymmetry that depresses wages and perpetuates discrimination.
Breaking this silence requires recognising that salary transparency is not some radical agenda but an overdue correction to power imbalances. Companies that genuinely pay fairly have nothing to hide and everything to gain from transparency that builds trust and attracts talent, and those resisting transparency reveal through their resistance precisely why transparency is necessary in the first place.
tasnimazer02@gmail.com