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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."
Sexual harassment and sexual assault should not be tolerated. But there's no nuance to the discussions, no proportionality between the allegations and the reaction. People are afraid to speak up and question what's going on right now. The are some parallels between Star Trek TNG'S The Drumhead and movements like #Metoo.
When anyone who calls into question how far the movement will go is labeled as being against women, which I've seen happen, it's out of hand. I'm for changing the status quo, but left unchecked, these movements get out of hand. When that happens, the consequences can be harmful to most or all involved. Look at the French Revolution as a movement based on an admirable goal that completely got out of control.
The goal seems to be to punish men, but there isn't a lot of discussion on how to actually solve the problem. The real issue is the differential in power that lends itself to abuse, and how when victims speak up, they often face retribution. Yes, there needs to be consequences for abuse, but that doesn't actually solve the problem that enables the abuse to happen to begin with. That is the logical end goal, but that's not what the movement seems to be after.
This may be interesting to watch. Individual cases of discrimination are often like any other case there is direct evidence, or not. Class actions tend to rely on statistics and that always reminds me of a certain university case.
In the university case, the primary evidence brought by the plaintiffs was that the school accepted a significantly higher percentage of male applicants than female applicants. That seemed pretty clear-cut. If the school admits 60% of male applicants and 45% of females, that looks a lot like there may be systematic discrimination against women.
The school pointed out that EVERY department admitted a higher percentage of women than men, however. When every department admits 60% of female applicants and 45% of men that looks a lot like systematically favoring women - discrimination against men.
Here's what had happened. The school had one department that was highly regarded, with competitive admissions. I don't recall offhand what the department was, so for the sake of this discussion let's call it the nursing school. It just so happened that the best department, the department with the most competitive admissions, was a department with mostly women applying. Most people who applied to the nursing school we're not accepted, and most people who applied to the nursing program were women.
Most male applicants applied to other, less competitive programs at the school.
Women had a BETTER chance of getting into the nursing program than men did. Every department admitted women at a higher rate, but the school as a whole rejected more females because their nursing program was that good - they rejected more nursing applicants than other majors.
The sad lesson for university administrators - if you don't want to be accused of discrimination, make sure the programs that women enjoy aren't your best programs, which will make admissions more competitive.
In a team of 5 men, the men are free to bounce ideas off each other, insult each other frequently, and establish a stable hierarchy. Creativity is unleashed, but incompetence is punished quickly. They can get shit done, and nobody sits around crying about how offended they are. At the end of the day, whatever got yelled at whoever is tabled, and you can grab a beer together, no hard feelings.
In a team of 4 men and 1 woman, the 4 men must walk around on eggshells and constantly self-censor. Should the women ever at any time feel that she is anything other than the most important person in the room, any or all of the men will face lawsuits or blackballing from HR firms. Creativity is squashed immediately: whatever the woman suggests must be adopted without criticism, else it is mansplaining and lawsuit time. You can't get a beer after work: include the woman and it is sexual harassment, exclude the woman and it is sexual discrimination.
Productivity collapses as you add additional women to the team. God help you if there's a minority among them. Stasi informers were less zealous.
Is it any wonder that the politically incorrect developing world is eating our lunch?
If you want to adjust for whatever you think the value of diversity is, fine - if you're the boss and you think it'll help your team be more effective, cool.
ALSO recognize there are other effects, if you want to the best performance. At my last job, my department shared a wing of the building with the accounting department. The accounting department was mostly women, including the CFO. My department was mostly men. In my department, we socialized by "giving each shit" - basically insulting each other, as male friends and co-workers do. We enjoyed some competition and it helped us do a better job. My boss, who was female, got along well in the culture of our department too - a culture that followed traditionally masculine norms.
The accounting department, mostly females, functioned differently. They didn't "give each shit" to socialize, rather they complimented each other, including "where did you get those great shoes?" That worked for them. The department of women had a way of working together based on how women normally interact, and it worked well.
My current job was similar. We had a good team, who helped each other a lot. We were learning a lot from each other. Then our team was combined with a team from another country, with a different culture. That has made daily Scrums, code reviews, and generally getting things done MUCH harder because in their culture you don't criticize someone's work and you definitely don't ever ask for help. We have to be very careful about learning from each other now because if you point out a different way to do something, somebody is going to get offended - it's insulting, in their culture. Don't offer to help when you have free time and relevant expertise - that means you're implying they are stupid or incompetent. The other team may have been doing great work using whatever social norms they used, but forced diversity has a real cost to our team. Just before combining with the other team, we also hired a guy from another country, with another set of norms about how team members should interact. It makes things tricky. Part of my job is training my team mates on some things. It's really hard to train the one guy who comes from another culture, because I don't understand how to relate to him, how to approach him.
Diversity has some benefits, and it has some costs. My boss at the last job wasn't a girlie girl. She enjoyed "hanging out with the guys", so it was a natural fit. The soft, sensitive guy who worked in accounting with the ladies my have been a natural fit too. Forcing "diversity", especially one man on a team of women or one woman in a team of men has some costs. I never thought about gender when I hired but if I'm ever in a position where I *have* to think about, I'd much rather have a fully balanced team of four women and four men than have only one "odd man out" in a team where everyone else is the opposite gender or culture, leading to one person not fitting in with how the team works.
Just FYI, thinking back over who I've hired, I've hired probably 65% women, 35% men, mostly because I hired for people working under my direct daily supervision and I'm an alpha, dominate personality. In other words, there was no question I was the boss and the leader. A nice, caring boss maybe, but very much the boss. I generally want things to be done my way. At least, learn my way and start by doing it my way,
then make changes only after you fully understand how I do it and why I do it that way. On average, more women are comfortable working in that type of than men. Men *generally tend* to want roles with more autonomy than what I hired for. The men generally didn't stick around as long as the women.
I don't think the problem is men in power, I think it's people in power. I don't know if power corrupts or the people who move up in orgs all share the same traits, but I think it's power over gender. I work on a mostly female team with multiple levels of female management and the sexual harassment is systemic and horrible. I totally understand why woman legitimately bitch about it so much. I've even gone to hr, with emails and chats, the female HR person actually said I should just enjoy the attention.