In a world where women are considered by many to be theweaker sex, a website started by three men is working toward improving theworkplace and promoting changes in how women are paid, promoted and rewardedfor a job well done.

Glassdoor.com,launched in June 2008, allows men and women to find and anonymously sharereviews, ratings and salary details about specific jobs and employers. Engineersare the site's largest audience, according to Co-founder Tim Besse.

The free website was born on the philosophy, "What wouldhappen if someone left the unedited employee survey for the whole company onthe printer and it got posted to the Web," he says. "We're trying to bringtransparency to businesses. Our goal is to improve workplaces and promotechange."

One way the team at Glassdoor.com is doing that is bycollecting information from the site and compiling it into specific reports, orsurveys. The first includes 4,200 people who reported engineering salarieswithin their company and included their gender, which is an optional questionon the site, Besse says.

The engineering community was a logical choice for the firstsurvey because it is the website's largest audience. "We basically startedwhere we had the richest set of information," he says.

What the survey revealed was a very small pay gap – 96.7percent – between the salaries of men and women with less than three years onthe job. Women earn about $68,237 while a man pulls in $70,533, according tosurvey results.

"Simply put, women earn less then men," says Besse. "Thereis a very little gap at the very beginning of someone's career. As experienceincreases, the gap continues to grow. They are each earning more, but femalesalaries aren't growing as much as men's."

After 10 years on the job, female engineers are making about$99,733 while men are earning $111,877, a pay gap of 89.15 percent, accordingto the survey.

Besse says the survey also includes information regardingbonuses. "Fifty percent of users report getting bonuses, but the gap isbigger," he says. "Both the same amount of men and women are reporting bonuses,(women's bonuses) just aren't as big as the men's bonuses."

According to the survey, a man with 10 or more years on thejob received an almost $8,000 bonus, while women received a little more than$4,000. Men and women with less than three years on the job received about$3,000 and $2,500, respectively.

Besse says a majority of the women included in the Glassdoorsurvey are over-represented in one job – Software Test Engineer – and only 3.8percent of women included have the title Engineering Director. The gender paygap does not account for job title, he says.

"We don't have proof, but one possible culprit could begender bias," Besse says of the discrepancy in the numbers.

Besse says there are several ways information is looked atto make sure it is legitimate. First, anyone posting has to provide a validatedemail address. Then, each and every report is read and has statisticalalgorithms applied to it.

"If the salary report doesn't pass the sniff test, it gets ared flag. We may not post it, delay the posting or contact the user," Bessesays. "It's about researching and becoming informed."

Besse started his career as a program manager at Expedia.comand always wondered what it would be like to work for Microsoft. "I had heard Iwould make more (money) at Microsoft, but I didn't know. Just five years ago,this information wasn't available."

He says more than 121,000 people have posted information onGlassdoor.com since its launch last year and many companies are starting totake notice. The only catch is that it's "give to get" – you have to postinformation before you can read anyone else's.

"I can candidly say I know they are aware of us. We know alot of CEOs are reading all the reviews of competitor companies. They are likepoliticians, they are concerned about their public images," says Besse. "We'restarting to matter to companies."

He says 52 percent of people are more likely to shareinformation about their salary if they can do so anonymously. "That highlightsthat this is a bit of a sensitive area in our culture," he says.