As snow turned to slush on a Saturday in late December, 12 strangers gathered at Glamour’s offices to take on a loaded issue: the gender pay gap. For two decades, Glamour’s Salary Survey has looked at what women in various fields earn across the country. But on this, its twentieth anniversary, we wanted to see how women’s pay compares to men’s. Are women really lagging behind?

So we asked 12 gutsy women and men in similar jobs, with similar titles and levels of experience, to come clean about their earnings. It wasn’t easy—most Americans would rather reveal their sex secrets than their salaries. But we found six pairs willing to be brave: two software engineers, two data analysts, two social media managers working in public relations, a duo in sales, a couple of cashiers, and a pair of graphic designers. All the participants wrote their salaries on large cards. Then we asked each pair—on the count of three—to flip their cards over. READ MORE