EDIT: I mean that all companies will be bothered by the government, regardless of what they allegedly did or didn't do. Prosecutors will go to the press and risk causing extra damage to the reputation of the companies when a company refuses their fishing expedition.
With the current administration, I would just have expected less zeal. But sadly some things never change.
> Lawless, who is not involved in the Google case, also said the company should be more transparent about its compensation practices: “If you’re innocent, then you open your records up in such a manner that people can see that people are being paid equally.”
Why do these unrelated lawyers want access to Google's salary band data?
It looks like they're civil rights lawyers; they might want to use it as a tool in their own cases. I wonder why Google's data specifically would help them.
(edit) It's a string attached to government money, not an out-of-the-blue demand for records or a lawsuit on behalf of any particular person:
Maybe it's too early, but for the life of me I can't find anywhere in the article where the data will be shared with Lawless and Scwartz. As I read it, the data only goes to DOL and those 2 were just asked for comments. Is is that once Google gives the data to DOL Lawless and Schwartz can then request it (maybe via FOIA)?
This stuff is cancer. I think Google made a terrible mistake trying to placate those who want equality of outcome. It's not achievable or even desirable.
In an effort supposedly to combat sexism and racism, discrimination on the basis of gender and ethnicity is now normalized and practically codified. But equality of outcome still proves elusive, as it always will, so people say Google still hasn't gone far enough. It never will be able to satisfy such people.
But I think a huge amount of damage may be done in the process of trying, in the form of making gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, etc, more important when we want to be making progress toward a world in which those things are not considered very important at all.
Another way of looking at it is that efforts at pay equality simply counteract bias built in to the system. Though it's often unspoken, gender/ethnicity/etc. already are hugely important in pay, even if the bias is unconscious.
There could be various reasons women are paid less which, from a business perspective, make some sense, e.g. the likelihood the business will lose its investment in the employee on account of her quitting work to raise children. By pressuring employers to pay women more than they assess them to worth, it may actually discourage employment of women and decrease diversity in the workplace. But surely it's some of both: women looked at individually do have some additional risk over your average man due to biology as well as the desire to actively mother children, AND women are unfairly (if unconsciously) discriminated against by men who assume they're less capable simply because they're women.
I actually feel pretty comfortable with per-job-code on-average pay equality between men and women. I think it's symbolically important, as well as acknowledging that simply having more female voices in the organization has worth in and of itself. But I would hope it could be enforced by social norms rather than requiring onerous government action.
"Women looked at individually do have some additional risk over your average man due to biology as well as the desire to actively mother children". Hmmmm....
"[T]he gender pay gap only exists for women over 40, suggesting it is less about gender and more about something else entirely. Indeed, women in their twenties currently out-earn men and it is only when they start a family that the pay gap starts to emerge.
"Is this down to nasty employers undervaluing female staff once they’ve had a baby or to outdated societal expectations that women are the main child carers?
"Or could it just be that many women who become mothers prefer to cut back their hours, work part-time, decline promotions, overtime and travel away from home so that they can see more of their children? Every survey suggests that women are doing this of their own free will but, hey, what do they know?" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12153967/The-gender...
It's a fact that only women can bear children. It's also a fact that women (for whatever reasons---not saying it's right or wrong) opt at a higher rate than men to reduce their hours or leave their career after the birth of a child. So, from a business perspective, there _are_ some additional risks associated with employing women that simply don't exist for men.
Women and men are different and in practice deal with parenthood differently as far as work is concerned. If there's ever to be equal pay for equal work, the discussion will have to include the issues as they are in addition to egalitarian ideals.
It is discriminatory and I think it's fair to feel upset at being painted with such a broad brush.
It seems right now that the choice faced by society is framed as binary: should we require equal pay across genders, or should we not? And each of these possibilities has both costs and benefits. Here are some costs and benefits of equal pay worth considering:
Costs: By requiring employers to pay women more than the employers assess to be their worth, fewer women will be employed, this at a time when gender ratios in many professions (especially IT!) are horrendously lopsided. Essentially, equal pay can be implemented as a price floor, meaning that the amount of female employment demanded will be less than it would at the natural equilibrium. Legislating equal pay might change some attitudes, but just entrench others.
Benefits: The women who are working get paid more. Society is seen as more just which likely alleviates angst all around. Women's voices are seen as more valuable because women are paid just as much as men, which disempowers sexists in their discrimination. More women will want to work at the higher price point, giving firms a better pool of applicants to choose from.
Invert these points to get costs/benefits of the status quo.
Both choices seem to incur both notable benefits and substantial costs. Surely there's some third way?
This thread is full of so many Google employees. Please when you are employed by Google and critical of the DoJ suit or the Guardian article, keep this in mind. I understand HQs desire to fight this and put it under the rug, but at the same time, they should have complied with the records request. Saying, "just trust us, we are google." Isn't Googley. Numbers are Googley. A best faith effort is Googley.
I don't work for google. I'm not even a fan of google right now. No, google shouldn't play along. The media surrounding such topics is so biased and self-serving to the agenda a journalist is trying to push that the less you make public the better off you are because you minimize what material you give for journalists writing about these topics to twist in service of furthering their agenda.
Google is very committed to gender equality. If there is systematic bias, this would be huge news. The only responsible track to take is to own the narrative and fix it. For whatever reason, some people at Google have played into this by not releasing the numbers initially asked for before the suit.
I agree that numerical analysis would be helpful, and I'm pretty sure they already released one. As someone who has worked at Google and at other companies, I think some people might just be distressed that Google of all places is being investigated, rather than the litany of workplaces with far worse gender dynamics. I can't speak about specific instances (which inevitably occur everywhere), but in terms of cultural attitudes towards this sort of thing I've never worked at a place more progressively aligned than Google.
I agree. But but being, "progressively aligned" isn't proof or evidence. Google _should_ have released both the raw numbers and analysis to the DoL with a full explanation so the same analysis, if fair, should be applied to other companies as well.
22 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] threadEDIT: I mean that all companies will be bothered by the government, regardless of what they allegedly did or didn't do. Prosecutors will go to the press and risk causing extra damage to the reputation of the companies when a company refuses their fishing expedition.
With the current administration, I would just have expected less zeal. But sadly some things never change.
Why do these unrelated lawyers want access to Google's salary band data?
It looks like they're civil rights lawyers; they might want to use it as a tool in their own cases. I wonder why Google's data specifically would help them.
(edit) It's a string attached to government money, not an out-of-the-blue demand for records or a lawsuit on behalf of any particular person:
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104
In an effort supposedly to combat sexism and racism, discrimination on the basis of gender and ethnicity is now normalized and practically codified. But equality of outcome still proves elusive, as it always will, so people say Google still hasn't gone far enough. It never will be able to satisfy such people.
But I think a huge amount of damage may be done in the process of trying, in the form of making gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, etc, more important when we want to be making progress toward a world in which those things are not considered very important at all.
There could be various reasons women are paid less which, from a business perspective, make some sense, e.g. the likelihood the business will lose its investment in the employee on account of her quitting work to raise children. By pressuring employers to pay women more than they assess them to worth, it may actually discourage employment of women and decrease diversity in the workplace. But surely it's some of both: women looked at individually do have some additional risk over your average man due to biology as well as the desire to actively mother children, AND women are unfairly (if unconsciously) discriminated against by men who assume they're less capable simply because they're women.
I actually feel pretty comfortable with per-job-code on-average pay equality between men and women. I think it's symbolically important, as well as acknowledging that simply having more female voices in the organization has worth in and of itself. But I would hope it could be enforced by social norms rather than requiring onerous government action.
"Is this down to nasty employers undervaluing female staff once they’ve had a baby or to outdated societal expectations that women are the main child carers?
"Or could it just be that many women who become mothers prefer to cut back their hours, work part-time, decline promotions, overtime and travel away from home so that they can see more of their children? Every survey suggests that women are doing this of their own free will but, hey, what do they know?" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12153967/The-gender...
It's a fact that only women can bear children. It's also a fact that women (for whatever reasons---not saying it's right or wrong) opt at a higher rate than men to reduce their hours or leave their career after the birth of a child. So, from a business perspective, there _are_ some additional risks associated with employing women that simply don't exist for men.
Women and men are different and in practice deal with parenthood differently as far as work is concerned. If there's ever to be equal pay for equal work, the discussion will have to include the issues as they are in addition to egalitarian ideals.
Also: http://www.nbcnews.com/better/careers/motherhood-penalty-can...
It seems right now that the choice faced by society is framed as binary: should we require equal pay across genders, or should we not? And each of these possibilities has both costs and benefits. Here are some costs and benefits of equal pay worth considering:
Costs: By requiring employers to pay women more than the employers assess to be their worth, fewer women will be employed, this at a time when gender ratios in many professions (especially IT!) are horrendously lopsided. Essentially, equal pay can be implemented as a price floor, meaning that the amount of female employment demanded will be less than it would at the natural equilibrium. Legislating equal pay might change some attitudes, but just entrench others.
Benefits: The women who are working get paid more. Society is seen as more just which likely alleviates angst all around. Women's voices are seen as more valuable because women are paid just as much as men, which disempowers sexists in their discrimination. More women will want to work at the higher price point, giving firms a better pool of applicants to choose from.
Invert these points to get costs/benefits of the status quo.
Both choices seem to incur both notable benefits and substantial costs. Surely there's some third way?
You really only understand how biased the media is once you've see it happen to your own employer.