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A group of high school students holding a bake sale in the US sold discounted cookies to women while men were made to pay the full price.
Kari Schott (above, centre), from the Young Democrats Club at Jordan High School in Sandy, Utah, told Fox13Now that the stunt was held in order to highlight the gender pay gap.
For every dollar a man makes a woman makes only 77 cents so we’re having the cookies be a dollar for a man and only 77 cents for a woman.
It's not fair that just because I was born a woman that I get paid 77¢. So this is an issue in my life and I thought I may as well start raising awareness starting young.
- Kari Schott
The sale was generally well-received from students - both male and female - with one boy called Alex Call noting: "I hope to see that everybody gets paid the same like even men, women, different races — that we all get paid the same and equal because we’re all humans."
While some students have called into question the accuracy of the statistic for the US, the most recent statistics (from 2013) show that the "typical woman working full time, year-round" earns 78 per cent of what a typical man earns.
Furthermore, a recent report from the UN's International Labour Organisation showed that the 77 per cent figure is correct worldwide.
It estimated that the figure has only improved by three percentage points in the last 20 years and will take another 70 to close altogether at the current rate.
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