Information about others pay is useful in making assessments of the fairness of own pay and to inform employment decision making (e.g. stay or exit). Surveys however suggest that there is a reluctance to talk about pay (Cullen & Perez-Truglia, 2018). Researchers have identified organisational factors, such as pay secrecy policies (Denice et al., 2024) and individual factors, such as relationship and self-protection issues (Smit & Montag-Smit, 2019) as inhibitors of individual pay information disclosure. Pay secrecy can contribute to the gender pay gap (Kim, 2015) and legislative initiatives in multiple countries have focussed on removing organisational factors (Bamberger, 2023), though assumes that women will be just as likely as men to take advantage of the opportunity to discuss pay. Based on social role theory (Eagly & Wood, 2012), we investigate whether people evaluate pay disclosure conversations as more consistent with the stereotype of men or women. We hypothesised and found that respondent’s evaluations of those who engage in pay disclosure conversations are more strongly associated with their stereotypes of men than their stereotypes of women. Pay information disclosure is multi-dimensional (Brown et al., 2022), so we investigate whether different types of disclosure are more typical or appropriate for men versus women. We find that asking, telling and gossiping about pay is more typical of men than women. Refusing to disclose is more typical of women. Results on the appropriateness of pay disclosure by men and women are mixed. We identify the policy and practice implications of the findings.
