At SRE Network’s Executive Symposium in June 2025, we outlined eight bold aspirational statements for our sector looking ahead to the year 2035. One of them posits that we will be able to respond to the question of pay equity with a simple, almost incredulous answer: What pay gap?

We know that this vision is not naive optimism, nor is this matter a back-burner issue. Pay inequity is not just about salaries. It is about who and what we value. It is about which leadership we reward, and whose contributions we overlook. 

Formatoriginal/Adobe Stock

That’s why the framing about the pay gap felt unsettling in a recent “What You Should Know” in the Aug. 12 edition of eJewishPhilanthropy’s “Your Daily Phil” newsletter. 

In the newsletter feature, eJP’s Nira Dayanim shared troubling but not at all surprising findings from Candid that women across the nonprofit sector continue to earn less than men for equal work, with women of color experiencing even greater disparities. It also highlighted that while women lead the majority of small-budget nonprofits, they lead under a third of those with budgets greater than $50 million; and at the same nonprofits, women CEOs earn 75 cents to every dollar earned by men. In the Jewish nonprofit sector, Leading Edge data similarly revealed that 65% of Jewish nonprofits with smaller budgets are led by women, while 65% of those with budgets over $20 million are led by men. 

Dayanim concluded with the observation that, “for now, the communal focus has shifted to more immediate crises.” 

This framing is something we see far too often: That the pay gap is simply an inevitable phenomenon and is not as pressing as other issues. 

In truth, it is at this exact moment, while the Jewish community is bombarded with urgent, external challenges from all sides, that closing the pay gap and advancing gender equity must be addressed. As Barry Finestone recently explained, “We ask people to work in a storm that’s battering all of us from every angle. If we don’t start protecting and replenishing them now, there won’t be enough of them left to rebuild whatever comes next.”

And who, exactly, is helming our storm-battered ships? Mostly women. 

Leading Edge’s data found that beyond the C-suite, 68% of our Jewish nonprofit workforce is female. These are the professionals who are carrying the weight of urgent issues while still being paid less than their male counterparts; still being overlooked as thought leaders of our sector; still being expected to hold the emotional toll of this moment on their employees; and peers and still being counted on to address the greatest needs of our Jewish lives.

We must act now to make the changes that have shown can lessen the pay gap and support the women driving our organizations, our institutions and our communities:

• Increase salary transparency 

• Implement consistent equity audits 
• Create board and executive accountability structures
• Educate and engage funders on gender-equity practices
• Align values with budgets

Organizations that have embraced these practices don’t just lessen pay gaps — they thrive, with higher retention, stronger morale, greater productivity and even deeper impact.

As a field committed to building safe, respectful and equitable workplaces, we cannot afford resignation from our core values of gender equity and belonging. Instead of accepting the persistence of inequity, let us be the sector that proves change is possible. Let us ensure that the next generation of Jewish communal professionals is not still reading articles about the never-closing pay gap, but is instead living in a world where those gaps have been closed, because we chose to close them.

The gender pay gap is not inevitable. It is the result of decades of choices, embedded biases, inequitable policies — organizational, systemic and cultural — that can and must be changed. And it will require collection action, both from the bold organizations across our field who have been advancing gender equity and workplace belonging for years and from the multitude of leaders and organizations shaping the conversation and philanthropic priorities, to finally make the pay gap a thing of the past. 

Rachel Gildiner is the executive director of SRE Network.