You're right. A lot of people have no idea what the person in the next office makes. They'd be shocked if they knew. In my last job somebody got ahold of a list of salaries, ran off hundreds of copies, and stuck them in everybody's mailbox. We almost had a class action discrimination suit. The situation was addressed fast.
Thank you for your comments. Apparently some people don't work in the real world.
If you are a man, I guess one of the posters on this thread can't use his abusive anti-female language with you.
Yes, in my company, the computer group from headquarters accidentally sent salaries to our branch. I got a 16% raise from that little incident.
We agree that there are often salary discrepancies between workers in the same jobs, and many of them are sex-based. The question is whether they are appropriate or not. In your workplace, evidently they were not defensible.
But the woman you are posting to cannot even begin to support her point, which is that SHE has been unfairly discriminated against and such discrimation is rampant. And that the situation WAS addressed quickly in YOUR anecdote further supports my comment, in that if she were doing any more than bitching, she would make her case in a court of law or to her supervisor, because it is so easy to sue and win for discrimination when it does take place.