Judge Dismisses Lawsuit That Claims Google Paid Female Employees Less Than Male Colleagues (cnn.com)

A California judge has rejected a class action claim against Google for alleged gender inequity. In September, three female Google employees filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming the search giant "engaged in systemic and pervasive pay and promotion discrimination." They sought class action status on behalf of women who have worked at Google in California for the past four years. CNN reports: This week, a judge rejected their request to make the suit a class action. A judge ruled that the class was "overbroad," stating that it "does not purport to distinguish between female employees who may have valid claims against Google based upon its alleged conduct from those who do not." Jim Finberg, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said his clients plan to file an amended complaint seeking class action certification. He said it will address the court's ruling and make "clear that Google violates the California Equal Pay Act throughout California and throughout the class period by paying women less than men for substantially equal work in nearly every job classification."

Comments

#MeeToo Crowd will appeal until

[Anonymous Coward]

it find a liberal judge.

It's been said before, companies do not systematically pay women less, if they did, they would only hire women.

Re: #MeeToo Crowd will appeal until

[ArmoredDragon]

That depends on what aspect you're talking about. With sexual harassment, yes, definite problem. And interestingly enough, it turns out that those who often shame it are purveyors of it.

With regard to pay discrimination, sorry, but there's no merit to it. Yes, there is an earnings gap, but no, there isn't some giant man conspiracy or corporate culture that makes it so. The research has been done extensively on this, and in the vast majority of cases, the earnings difference comes down to good ol' fashioned biology, especially when it comes to maternity. This is one of those things in life that cannot be helped.

Re: #MeeToo Crowd will appeal until

[Chas]

Bull-shit!

You make ANYONE afraid long enough, ESPECIALLY for an unjustified reason, you're going to, eventually, get blowback.

And, seeing as we're talking about multiple groups of people who seem to have a hard time separating fact and reason from emotion and anger, that blowback is going to be FUGLY.

Re: #MeeToo Crowd will appeal until

[The Cynical Critic]

I've seen people post that article as proof that Damore was wrong, but all it really does is try to belittle the effect of all the scientifically proven gender differences Damore brought up in his memo. It doesn't disprove anything Damore actually brought up in the the memo, the author merely belittles every single fact Damore uses to explain why the status quo is what it is and why trying to change it will come with numerous ill effects for the organisation and the people working for it.

Seriously, when all you can do is try belittle someone else's points rather than actually disprove any of them it goes to show that you don't actually have a leg to stand on. You're merely reflexively disagreeing with someone, refusing to admit you're wrong when you know you are.

Next step

[Anonymous Coward]

The women will claim they were sexual assaulted in order to get even with Google. Anything and everything seems to constitute sexual assault these days. There are egregious examples like Harvey Weinstein, but much of this is about punishing men so women can take their places without having to earn it.

Re:Next step

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see the phrase "sexual assault" go away and be replaced with a description of what *actually happened*. It's too easy to fit a multitude of different behaviours into a neat little box like "sexual assault" and defame somebody with it.

Also, you can tell by the fact that only men are being "outed" that there's an agenda at play in the media. Just like how you only ever see "black lives matter" but not "Chinese lives matter" or "white lives matter" or "immigrants lives matter" or anything else that doesn't fit into their flavour of the week agenda based reporting.

Re:Next step

[Anonymous Coward]

No one deserves the results of biased treatment - neither men with pay bonus nor women without

Which is why Jzanu supports prostate cancer screenings for women and maternity services for men paid for by the government.

Re:Next step

[djinn6]

...the five members of the team are not all of equal value, because the one woman brings something that none of her colleagues have, a woman's perspective.

You're saying there are innate differences due to gender. One gender could do something the other couldn't. Then wouldn't those differences mean women and men are not necessarily equally effective? And if that's the case, then wouldn't different pay could be justified by different productivity?

Or to put it simply, if you accept there are innate differences between the genders, then you must necessarily accept different pay, hiring ratio and other such metrics can be a natural outcome due to those differences.

Re:Next step

[cerberusss]

I'm no social justice warrior at all, but this is incredibly generalizing. It just completely depends on the people involved. It sounds like you had a bad experience once, and then assumed it's the same everywhere.

It's not. I've worked with women in teams that resulted in an unpleasant work environment. And I've worked with women in teams that resulted in a great project.

Re:Next step

[djinn6]

I said nothing of the sort. I said a different perspective, which derives primarily from different life experience. Would you seriously try to argue that women and men have the same life experiences? No innate difference at all is required to have a different way of seeing the world.

If that perspective leads to making different decisions (better decisions, as you claim), then there are behavioral differences between the genders. That behavior could translate to better team dynamics, but it could also translate to worse individual performance. You've simply discounted the negative possibility because... well, I don't know. Plus, you didn't provide a source for your claim.

As it happens, I believe there is ample evidence, both in common experience and in formal studies, that there are innate differences between men and women, in the sense of slightly different statistical distributions of abilities. Individual variation absolutely dwarfs these statistical biases, though, so there's no whatsoever point in applying gender stereotypes to evaluate a given individual.

No disagreement here.

Different pay absolutely could and should be justified by different productivity. That said, my experience in the field of software engineering, is that if there's a systematic difference in productivity it's in favor of women. I suspect that's not a result of inherently greater capability in female engineers, but of various selection biases against them, which collectively mean that a woman has to be better than her male peers to be perceived to be as good.

How do you know you're not simply biased against men? Perhaps others have an accurate assessment of those women, while you perceived them to be more productive because of your bias.

Basically, there is almost no reason whatsoever to expect that slight differences in distribution of ability (and they really are slight) would cause the large differences in employee population that we see and every reason to expect that the differences we see are a result of bias. Note that bias need not be intentional to be real. In fact it's easy to construct plausible scenarios in when everyone is trying hard to be completely meritocratic and the result is completely unmeritocratic.

Then perhaps hiring (and promotions) should not take into gender account at all. Make it so that the gender (or in fact any other physical trait) could not be determined, e.g. instead of in-person interviews, do only IM interviews. Why doesn't any software company do this? Oh right, because it would skew their numbers even further towards men and the so-called feminists would have a fit.

...the recent paucity of women in software engineering...

I'd like to see a source for that. A quick look suggests the opposite is happening.

The clear implication is that the rare women with the talent and interest for the job would be significantly more valuable to a company, precisely because of their rarity.

No. Women are not collectibles, rareness does not equate to value. Men of similar talent should be recruited just as aggressively.

And in any case, if you pursue them because of their gender, then you are already a sexist, because you presume their ability is tied to whether their genitals exist inside or outside their body.

Don't Make The Mistake...

[ytene]

... of reading the OP and concluding that the presiding Judge is in any way biased against the plaintiffs (the three female Google employees).

If anything, the exact opposite could be true.

The Judge will know that this case is going to be ferociously defended by Google, that it will garner a very great deal of public interest and scrutiny and that, if it gets as far as substantive rulings, could very well set a precedent and become case law that is cited in future disputes. In other words, the Judge simply can't afford to allow even a small chink or gap or flaw in the prosecution's argument, because to do so would be to invite the defendants to demand that the case be tossed.

Nor should you read the above statement and conclude that I believe the Judge to be inclined towards the plaintiffs in this case. The Judge will equally demand that the defendants are thorough and reasoned in their arguments.

This case has all the hallmarks of something that will be super-significant. The Court is simply making sure that both parties put their best legal foot forward.

Re:Similar != equal

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop posting with your iOS device, it fucks up the '

divide & conquer

[Reverend Green]

If they scream loudly enough and often enough about a non-existent problem - remember in almost all US megacorps, there is codified systemic employment bias against men - then we will forget about the real problems in the workplace.

Workers upset that wages are stagnant while cost of living is skyrocketing? "He looked at me the wrong way! Reeeeeeeeeee!"

Workers angry that their jobs are being offshored while executives sit back and collect handsome bonuses? "He said 'hi' to me, I feel harassed. Burn the witch! Reeeeeeeeeee!"

Workers demoralized because the entire management of the company went to the same three elitist private schools, and public school grads don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting promoted? "Misogyny! Microaggressions! Literally Hitler! Reeeeeeeeeee!"

Re:divide & conquer

[squiggleslash]

No, he doesn't. Because it isn't true. But there's a reason he believes it.

You, I, and him are members of a privileged class (we're all men, and for all I know all white, though I can't say that for definite.) We had no choice in the matter, we were born one day with the right wedding tackle, and for reasons that remain somewhat difficult to understand, we had it a little easier than people who didn't.

This was not our fault. Like I said, we had no choice in the matter. We won the chromosodal (if that's a word, I guess it is now) lottery. We never even willfully entered it.

But that wasn't the end of it. Because while Feminists and others fighting for civil rights keep throwing around this term "privilege", you, I, and most of the other men (those of us who do not have surnames like "Romney", "Trump", "Rockefeller", etc) certainly don't feel very "privileged". We had to work hard to get our jobs. We have bosses or CEOs or whatever (Some of whom are women!) that are happy to fire us at will just to protect their bonuses. We're working hard, stressed, insulted, and not having a great time of it, thank you very much. We don't feel "privileged".

And you respond and tell me the definition of "privilege", and stop right there, because I already know, I'm on your side, I usually spend most of my time laying into these MRA idiots and like you I've been modded down repeatedly for spewing "SJW bullshit" like "Maybe if lots of women accuse someone they work with of sexual assault, we should, you know, at least maybe investigate it?" or stuff like that. It's just a really bad choice of word.

But that's not all. Because we're men, we also have some profoundly negative things to deal with that women aren't. You know the term, "Toxic masculinity" (which also seems to be a term widely misunderstood, like "privilege", but I think there's less excuse there.) No emotions. Obliged to defend the ridiculous, to fight for it even. Being female might have some seriously shitty consequences but at least they're allowed to cry about it.

So what happens? Well, a lot of men seem to handle it badly, and that's what we're seeing now. They're taking the notion that there's "privilege" as being an attack on them personally. They're dealing with awful toxic shit, while being told how bad "the other side" has it. If you're limping into a hospital with a broken leg, in agonizing pain, you probably are going to resent it if everyone's crowded around a kid with terminal cancer and ignoring your leg.

And in that environment, I can really see men being easily mislead by those who want to hold on to their power about their situation.

It's really, really, obvious right now that the GP's point is false. Like overwhelmingly so. I mean, every other news story is about a man who got away with sexually harassing, and even sexually assaulting, women with impunity for years, their employers not merely knowing all about it, but systemically helping them. Women who complained contemporaneously didn't bring down those men, they were either shunned or, if they were really, really, lucky they got a cash settlement.

But... for years he's been told the opposite. He's heard his employer's sexual harassment policy so he knows there are consequences. Women who were harassed and reported it were treated with suspicion. Men who suffered the rare consequences of such policies didn't exactly run around confessing that they assault women, they instead came up with conspiracy theories and people like the GP believed it, because, well, people fear terrible consequences happening to them due to unproven allegations, and anyway, Fred from accounting was always so nice, he never seemed like the kind of guy who'd put a hand up anyone's skirt, I mean, I wouldn't, why would he?

Several years ago, I heard a Feminist argue that men do need a men's rights movement. Not like the MRA movement of today, which is better described as an anti-WRM, but someone who'd fight for things like male parental leave rights,

Re:divide & conquer

[Anonymous Coward]

MRAs are not a men's rights movement in their current form, they're just a bunch of anti-feminists.

So your response is the same as what the other side says all the time about yours?

"Feminism is not about women's rights in their current form, they just hate men!"

"Antifa today isn't about anti-fascism. They're just fascists!"

"Liberals today aren't about liberal values. They're more like illberals!"

An actual men's rights movement would fight toxic assumptions about men and how men should behave

So how could an actual men's rights movement be feminism, as AmiMojo suggested? AmiMojo (and yourself) aren't fighting against toxic assumptions about men. You're doing the opposite here. You're perpetuating a toxic assumption that men who associate themselves with MRAs today are not really about men's rights.

We know this is toxic because, as above, that's what the other side says about you. You're no better than the MRAs you badmouth.

What's more, your earlier outline how many men misunderstand the terms of feminism (privileged, toxic masculinity, etc). Well, isn't that evidence that feminism is NOT about fighting against toxic assumptions about men, but rather creating more of it? Feminist jargon is giving men wrong ideas and making them more confused, not less. Feminism has utterly failed these men, failing to explain themselves and losing those men to groups that "mislead" them (nice toxic assumption there, that if they're not on your side they be being "misled")

if you think they are, you're not paying attention.

Ah yes, the "if you don't agree with us, it's your fault" argument. Or rather non-argument. Just like those women hating MRAs talking about the red pill and "cucks" who don't get it.

I guess it's not just AmiMojo who exhibits this "complain about something, and then proceed to do it himself" syndrome