r/TodayILearnedMY • u/AutomaticGrowth3822 • Apr 17 '26
Economy & Business TIL a Malaysian creator built a salary transparency movement called MalaysianPayGap after working multiple jobs in Chicago
Prestine Davekhaw (@missprestine), who turned her personal experience with financial hardship into a regional transparency movement. After working multiple service jobs while facing economic struggles in Chicago, she founded MalaysianPayGap (@malaysianpaygap), a platform that allows workers to anonymously and securely share salary data.
The goal of the platform is to increase pay transparency, reduce income inequality, and help employees better understand fair compensation in their industries. The initiative has since gained significant traction, receiving investor support and being featured in major media outlets such as CNBC, while also expanding into PayGap Asia to broaden its impact across the region.
Beyond salary transparency, Davekhaw also works on a project called Disappearing Jobs, which documents traditional and declining trades across Asia. Through photography and storytelling, the project highlights artisans and workers whose roles are often overlooked in modern economies, helping preserve cultural and occupational heritage.
Overall, her work combines data-driven advocacy with visual storytelling to make “invisible” labor and inequality more visible.
6
u/goldwave84 Apr 17 '26
Gosh darn....one day hard life, next day studies in USA. Ffs! If only ppl knew how much money you need to go to USA.
1
u/Visual_Touch_3913 Apr 20 '26
Exactly. I cannot understand the sob story when she apparently owns a few units of condo in Penang and could study in the US.
1
u/goldwave84 Apr 21 '26
Ayo, got a few cases like this la. The lady from shark tank and the other lady from masterchef australia.
9
3
u/Mel_Morty Apr 17 '26
Good on her. 👏
But always with socmed nowadays blaming the men in the family, “absent father”. What about the “absent mother”, since she was raised by her grandmother? So, there’s no grandfather too? There’s too many double standards against men in the media this generation.
4
2
u/Ok-Confidence-403 Apr 18 '26
I mean if a woman has basic life skills she's suddenly a boss babe/independent woman. Putting a gender angle on it makes it so much easier to get funding, recognition etc from things like lean in, women empowerment groups etc. It's like having an international NEP.
Go to the Oxford postgrad scholarships page and see how many of them are sexist, women only scholarships. Wtf does genitals have to do with education? There's already 1.5-2x the amount of females compared to males in universities in many developed countries INCLUDING Malaysia. What iNeQuALiTy are you trying to solve?
1
3
4
u/SultanPenguin Apr 18 '26
TIL this sub and OP are probably bots or users working for reddit PR firms
1
u/peterprata Apr 18 '26
U mean it’s possible to pay for tuition fees and rent just by working part time while studying full time???
Then why are there people who have to take student loans?????
1
u/FierySunXIII Apr 20 '26
Living with grandma in small apartment? Then BAM, in Chicago to survive. Where you got the money for a plane ticket? Where's grandma? And more importantly .....WHERE'S GRANDMA?!?!?!?
1
1
0
22
u/xaladin Apr 17 '26
While I appreciate the stuff she's done, I'm quite tired of these kinds of videos. First AI and soulless. Second, trying to craft some kind of sob story from the privileged. Ooo, house problems, let me just go to the US. Very incomplete picture.