A bake sale intended to raise awareness of the gender pay gap has sparked outrage on an Australian university campus, with discounted cupcakes for women and other marginalised groups prompting claims of discrimination, threats of rape and violence, and memes of varying quality.
The women’s collective of the University of Queensland student union organised the Gender Pay Gap Bake Sale as part of their annual feminist week, with prices set at the proportion of the dollar female graduates of each faculty earned relative to men.
Prices for each baked good started at $1 for students who identified as men, with deductions for women and more for those in male-dominated industries, explained the description on the University of Queensland student union (UQU) events calendar.
“For example, if you are a woman of colour in the legal profession, a baked good at the stall will cost only cost you 55 cents!”
The pricing structure was expanded before the sale was held on Tuesday to include discounts for sexual orientation, ethnicity and ability.
Similar equality bake sales have been held by groups across the world since at least 2003 to account for the disparity in pay between men and women.
Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in February last year showed that men in full-time employment earned an average of $1,587.40 a week and women earned an average of $298.10 less. The difference was greater for women in science, technology, engineering and maths.
Madeline Price, the gender and sexuality vice-president at the UQU and a final-year arts and law student from north of Brisbane, said the event was intended to be a conversation starter.
But she and other organisers encountered a backlash from fellow students rallying against the sale of baked goods to men for a maximum of $1, claiming gender discrimination.
A post to the Facebook group UQ StalkerSpace – not an official social media presence of the University of Queensland but followed by 37,500 people, mostly students – sparked campus-wide debate over the sale and even the existence of the wage gap.
“UQU, which is meant to represent all students, is engaging in conduct that’s blatantly discriminatory against men to try and make some asinine political point,” wrote student Ashley Millsteed in a now-deleted post.
“What’s interesting is that this bake sale itself constitutes discrimination under both Queensland and federal anti-discrimination law.”
Millsteed’s post prompted an online backlash that included threats of rape and violence against organisers.
Price told Guardian Australia that abuse was posted to the feminist week page on Facebook and sent to members of the UQU women’s collective and supporters of the event.
“Predominantly, they were from people external to the UQ student body, which was heartening,” she said.
At the other end of the spectrum of online experience, it also sparked memes hashtagged with #cupcakegate.
“On all levels but physical, I identify as a baked sale,” posted one member to UQ Stalkerspace.
“50c or $1.25. Bruce doesn’t care. He’ll dust off the cupcakes whatever the price,” posted another alongside a photo of the chocolate-covered child Bruce Bogtrotter from Matilda.
A photo of a lecture slide also suggested the bake sale had been used as a case study for a second-year economics paper.
“Please no more cupcake gender pay gap posts,” posted Raymond Li in the group on Monday. “It is literally a slight discount for cupcakes at a stall. Even if the gender wage gap does not exist (it probably does), the outrage caused by this is completely asymmetric. No one here ever got nearly this angry about underpaid labour or even deaths caused by war. This is a cupcake sale. Seriously. Worth thinking about what we actually get upset about.”
Despite the backlash, Price said the bake sale went ahead without incident on Tuesday, with all goods sold in less than an hour.
“We did have quite a few students who identified with one or more factor and thus received quite heavily discounted items due to the pay disparity they receive in real life,” she said.
“The majority of men who approached the bake sale did so in solidarity to the cause – they handed over $1 without even considering the other factors.
“Many were surprised to learn that their status as a man with a disability or identifying as LGBTIQA+ also allowed them a discount proportionate to their economic losses in real life.”
