The Company Behind Wall Street’s “Fearless Girl” Statue Owes Millions for Paying Women Less Than Men

State Street Corp. is the parent company of State Street Global Advisors, the investment firm that grabbed headlines this past year when they commissioned and installed "Fearless Girl," a statue of a little girl standing bravely in the face of the famed Wall Street bull statue to raise awareness of gender inequality and specifically the gender wage gap. Their statue was not without controversy: The artist of the bull especially had a problem with the way it re-contextualized what he intended as a piece of inspirational art and instead turned it into something menacing. But overall the statue was a hit with people's Instagrams. Today, though, the statue gained new significance. Oh wait, that sounds like a good thing. Let me try that again. Today the statue gained new ironic significance. It turns out State Street hasn't practiced what they preached in terms of the gender wage gap, and now they are literally paying for it.

The custody bank will pay $5 million to more than 300 women, following a U.S. Department of Labor audit that uncovered the alleged discrepancies, according to a settlement agreement disclosed Wednesday.

The Labor Department alleged that women in senior leadership positions at Boston-based State Street received lower base salaries, bonus pay and total compensation since at least December 2010. The company said it has cooperated fully with the agency and that it disagreed with the findings of the audit, which was done in 2012.

Additionally it was found that black employees were often paid less than their white counterparts, and will therefore enjoy the fruits of that $5 million settlement as well.

There are two ways of looking at this. State Street would say that this is evidence of their commitment to parity in the compensation of men and women. They aren't fighting this and are simply paying out what amounts to, on average, a little over $16,000 a person. That's somewhat compelling, except it's not as compelling as the counterpoint, which is hey, why not just do the right thing in the first place? Especially if you're going to hold yourselves up as the ideal for other companies to see. (Also, not for nothing, but a $5 million payout for a $2.6 trillion asset-management company is not exactly impressive. ) I imagine this is how we ended up here:

GUY WHO LOOKS LIKE A POLITICAL CARTOON OF A WALL STREET BOSS: Lady stuff is popular. What if we do something about that?

WOMAN: We could pay women the same as men.

GWLLAPCOAWSB: But what can we do? Something eye-catching. Something Twitter will like.

WOMAN: We could pay women the same as men.

GWLLAPCOAWSB: Really people? No ideas?

WOMAN: We could pay women the same as—

MAN: I have a friend who's an artist. We do a brave girl statue?

GWLLAPCOAWSB: Perfect! But "brave" is played out. Let's call her "Fearless Girl." Put it across from the bull! Meeting adjourned.

[Woman rubs temples as fiftieth migraine of the day begins.]

Here's hoping this settlement marks the beginning of companies practicing what they make publicity-craving public art about. And in the meantime, congrats to the artist of the bull, who is probably having a very good day today.

H/T Bloomberg.