Microsoft Improves Efforts To Offer Equal Pay For Equal Work To Its Employees (windowscentral.com)

An anonymous reader writes: One day before National Equal Pay Day, Microsoft has provided a new update on its efforts to provide equal pay for equal work for all of its employees. Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's Executive Vice-President for Human Resources, wrote in a blog post: "Today, for every $1 earned by men, our female employees in the U.S. earn 99.8 cents at the same job title and level. Racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. combined earn $1.004 for every $1 earned by their Caucasian counterparts. Breaking it down even further, African American/black employees are at $1.003; Hispanic/Latino(a) employees are at 99.9 cents; and Asian employees are at $1.006 for every $1 earned by Caucasian employees at the same job title and level, respectively." Hogan said she is "encouraged by these results" and that Microsoft will continue to monitor the data and publicly disclose it as part of Microsoft's annual public diversity and inclusion information and data reporting. "Our announcement today is another step forward along the path of greater diversity and inclusion progress at Microsoft, and in society as a whole. Along with our industry peers, the mission of landing intentional, enduring and impactful diversity and inclusion initiatives is one will we continue to pursue vigilantly."

Comments

Well done!

[SirSlud]

Two things /. users love! The pursuit of social equality and Microsoft!

Re:Well done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pursuit being the word. Their average employee age statistics were notably absent despite claims they've made in the past about addressing ageism in their hiring practices.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

[onyxruby]

How the hell did one of these equal pay stories get posted where they actually attributed for things like similar job and experience? If they keep this up the 77 cents on the dollar myth will be exposed for the lie that it is.

http://www.washingtonexaminer....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/th...

Re:Lies, damn lies and statistics

[NotInHere]

Its no lie. Its probably true that women get less paid for their work. But that has nothing to do with the fact that they are female. I think nobody is as mean and gives a co-worker less money only because they are female. I think it has another reason, very simple: many women work part-time or work in fields that don't pay much. This has nothing to do with the choice of the individual, I guess any female can have a career as successful as a man, its a question of individual choice not of discrimination.

Feminists should just realize that most women chose to raise a family instead of focusing their job as much as men. This is nothing bad or something that needs to be changed. Its free people doing a free choice, and feminists are constantly trying to take that freedom away.

By saying that females who chose to raise their children and do part time work instead of full time work and letting some stranger raise the child are limited and backwards-minded, the feminists just insult millions of females having chosen precisely that model together with their partners.

If a woman wants to let a stranger raise her children, or if she wants the man to take over those duties, its perfectly fine. Just feminists shouldn't dictate what's wrong or right.

Re:Lies, damn lies and statistics

[shutdown -p now]

Men can negotiate harder. The same studies have shown that when women negotiate the way men normally do, they're written down as "bitchy" (whereas men get labeled as "assertive").

Re:Lies, damn lies and statistics

[Uberbah]

Its no lie.

But it is, for reasons you even list:

many women work part-time or work in fields that don't pay much. This has nothing to do with the choice of the individual, I guess any female can have a career as successful as a man, its a question of individual choice not of discrimination. Feminists should just realize that most women chose to raise a family instead of focusing their job as much as men.

If a man worked part time or stepped out of the work force for ten years to be a stay-at-home dad, he, too, would make less money than his co-workers that went on with their careers - male or female.

What feminists are actually demanding is equal pay for less work. Less hours on the job, less experience, and in less stressful or physically dangerous positions.

Re:And what about vacation inequality?

[guruevi]

Not sure whether you have a contract but employers may not discriminate in determining who gets vacation. If your co-worker gets vacation (paid or unpaid) because he's Indian, you should get some too, otherwise stick your HR department on your supervisor or even your attorney.

Re:End this crap

[Etherwalk]

Equality in pay for the same job and the same hours is already the law. In fact it has been repeatedly proven that women make more money in the same job as men when they work the same hours and have the same backgrounds.

Can we please stop perpetuating this bullshit about how everyone should be paid the same as everyone else, no matter what the job is. People need to pay attention to the source of this propaganda. Hint: The people pushing this crap down don't put their own money where their mouths are, and won't. They are ultra rich, and you are a peon.

Try getting a job while obviously pregnant. Good luck with that.

Social pressure

[Tablizer]

I'm not sure how to explain this without sounding like a misogynist, but careers are often more important to men because men are more often judged by income. There is strong social pressure on men to work hard for raises and promotions because of this. Women tend to be socially judged on looks, not earnings, and thus they focus more on that.

This is not saying women are inherently lazy, only that there is less social pressure on them to succeed in the work-place, and thus more women on average just coast in their career.

Women also end up having to deal with family issues more, in part because they care more about family and home, and in part because men are on average domestically flaky. This means women will focus on domestic issues more, distracting them from career.

I'm not sure how to measure or address these, but if they are not addressed, there could be some unpleasant side-effects.

Re:End this crap

[NotInHere]

Yeah if I had a company, and had to pay women only 77% of what men earn, for precisely the same work, then I would only hire women. It would be a giant cost saving benefit, my company would be doing great.

But oh, if I ran a company I were an evil capitalist who hates women and wants only men to work, and my hatred towards women would be so big that I only paid them 77 cents on the dollar.

</sarcasm>

I hope they pay their people hourly

[kick6]

if they're salaried it's not equal pay for equal work as women take more sick days. First link I found says SIGNIFICANTLY more. https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...

Re:I hope they pay their people hourly

[AmiMoJo]

Another way to look at this is that men don't take enough sick days. They would rather come in to work feeling unwell, be unproductive and infect everyone else, than ask for a day to recover. I used to be like that, until my boss encouraged me to take more days, and then I realized I can get over a cold in a day or two instead of a week if I just rest properly.

Plus, women tend to take on more childcare than men, so some of the time is used for that and again men should be taking more to look after their kids.

Re:A man in our society is expected to work hard..

[shutdown -p now]

What you describe are exactly the kind of gender stereotypes and expectations set by them that those evil "SJWs" are arguing against.

(And yes, they do raise the issue with male stereotypes, as well. If you haven't seen it, then you haven't been looking.)

History

[Etherwalk]

Do you believe that you working 38 hours a week should make the same wage as someone working 45 hours a week? That is the only way that parity works, unless people work the exact same hours at the same job. Which they do not, for all kinds of reasons. Pregnancy for example, women take time off because they are the only gender that can give birth.

Know your history. Believe it or not, Congress knew and understood very clearly when they passed the Equal Pay Act that it cost businesses more to employ women because of Pregnancy, for example. They had statistics on it, they understood that a purely economic decision would have taken that into account.

And they decided to pass the equal pay act anyway. Because there are social goals that we are willing to pay money for and make the economy less efficient to achieve. That's why we don't allow slavery. That's why we don't allow child labor. That's why we allow antidiscrimination lawsuits around race.

It's not perfectly fair to men, of course--it necessarily means that men are cross-subsidizing women and getting paid less. But it's still something we've decided is desirable. If you want to change it, elect a new Congress.

Re:A man in our society is expected to work hard..

[AmiMoJo]

"SJWs" like myself do raise this all the time. There are actually words to describe it, words that trigger instant down-mods.

The word to describe this situation is "patriarchy". It simply describes the way a society is biased towards masculinity, things like bread-winning over home-making, putting pressure on men to play certain roles and avoid others like being a stay at home parent. Things like running a household and brining up kids are undervalued, not seen as real work or something that only women do.

Feminism has studied this for decades and offers solutions. In fact there has been a lot of success, when you consider what the 1950s model father and mother were like. But for some people feminism is a trigger word, so they down-mod it hard and then complain that feminists don't care about these issues.