The 2017 U.S. Census data on median earnings for full-time, year-round workers found that women made 80 percent of that of their male counterparts. The gap for African America and Latina women is 60 percent and 55 percent. At the current rate, women will not reach pay parity until 2059.

Mercer finds actively managing pay equity "is associated with higher current female representation at the professional through executive levels and a faster trajectory to improved representation." Research from Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, and Robeco Samsuggests more gender diverse leadership leads to superior stock price performance and return on equity. McKinsey states, "the business case for the advancement and promotion of women is compelling." Best practices include "tracking and eliminating gender pay gaps."

Assessing if a company has a gender pay gap requires analyzing both equal pay and equal opportunity. This is most commonly done using adjusted and unadjusted (median) pay data. Median pay data is the key metric used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Economic Forum, and the U.S Department of Labor, among others.

Since 2018, the UK has mandated disclosure of both adjusted and unadjusted (median) gender pay data, demonstrating that the publication of such data is feasible and informative. Biogen UK provides an annual gender pay report that reports mean and median gender pay gap and bonus gap, and pay quartiles. The Biogen UK 2019-2020 gender pay gap report states that it had a sixteen percent mean and eight percent median hourly wage gap, and a twenty-eight percent mean and twenty-five percent median bonus pay gap.

Biogen does not report on the gender pay gap for its U.S. employees.

Investors seek quantitative, comparable data to understand the effectiveness of Biogen U.S. pay gap policies.

Regulatory risks associated with pay equity exist. The Paycheck Fairness Act, pending in Congress, would improve company-level transparency and strengthen penalties for equal pay violations. Massachusetts, California, New York and Maryland have enacted significant changes to their equal pay laws.

Companies would be well served by understanding the equity attributes of their pay, at all levels of the corporation, by gender as well as other facets of diversity, such as race and ethnicity. Leading large-cap companies across industry sectors including Apple, Starbucks and Bank of New York Mellon, among others, have publicly committed to pay equity and published the results of gender pay assessments.