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Oracle Systematically Underpaid Thousands of Women, Lawsuit Says (theguardian.com)
Thousands of women were systematically underpaid at Oracle, one of Silicon Valley's largest corporations, according to a new motion in a class-action complaint that details claims of pervasive wage discrimination. From a report: A motion filed in California on Friday said attorneys seek to represent more than 4,200 women and alleged that female employees were paid on average $13,000 less per year than men doing similar work. An analysis of payroll data found disparities with an "extraordinarily high degree of statistical significance," the complaint said. Women made 3.8% less in base salaries on average than men in the same job categories, 13.2% less in bonuses, and 33.1% less in stock value, it alleges.
The civil rights suit comes as the tech industries faces increased scrutiny of gender and racial discrimination, including sexual misconduct, unequal pay and biased workplaces. The case against Oracle, which is headquartered in Redwood Shores and provides cloud computing services to companies across the globe, resembles high-profile litigation against Google, which has also faced repeated claims of systematic wage discrimination.
The civil rights suit comes as the tech industries faces increased scrutiny of gender and racial discrimination, including sexual misconduct, unequal pay and biased workplaces. The case against Oracle, which is headquartered in Redwood Shores and provides cloud computing services to companies across the globe, resembles high-profile litigation against Google, which has also faced repeated claims of systematic wage discrimination.
Correlation is not causation. There is no proof that the inclination is caused by biology, nor the degree of productivity.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Equal opportunity doesn't mean equal results. There are tons of explanations that could account for the statistical difference that are not discrimination.
I recall reading about a company who's salary decisions were completely made by computer, which never knew anything about gender, and there was still a gender pay-gap. So the computer was "fired" (discontinued, same thing) for being sexist.
That said, it's still possible that there is discrimination going on that should be investigated, but it shouldn't be the default call-back.
A Navajo said it best, IMHO: "It is a sad time we live in where outrage is a recreational activity."
Salary is not simply a function of the job. It also depends on your resume and experience. Seems completely possible to me that a 4% difference could simply be explained by the opportunity cost of maternity leave.
Correlation is not causation. There is no proof that the pay difference is caused by gender discrimination as opposed to performance.
Study after study has shown that women are biologically less inclined in technology and obviously they would be less productive in a high-tech company
Sorry but that does not logically follow at all. Just because it is rarer for women to be interested in technology it does not mean that those individual women who are interested are any less skilled it just means that there are fewer of them. Your point could explain why Oracle hires more men than women but not why it pays them less.
I choose to be optimistic, perhaps consequence of this mandatory gendered equal pay is that men will be allowed to "lean out" of crazy overtime and weekend hours that have been expected up to this point.
Americans are making 20% less than they used to (article says "Millennials" but I don't know about you but I took a paycut when the economy crashed in 2008).
Men and Women are now fighting among ourselves over 1-3% (a percentage that might just be due to men not taking time off for child rearing) while the ruling class is laughing all the way to the bank with that 20%.
This has been modus operandi for centuries: wedge issues. You find something to divide the working class into manageable chunks. Race, creed, sex. Hell, when the Japanese couldn't do it with race because they were all Japanese they made up classes based on jobs and kept books of them by name.
Don't fall for it. Demand better pay for all workers. Support the push for higher minimum wage. Vote in your primary for pro-Union, pro-worker candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. Demand all workers get healthcare that isn't tied to your job so you can switch jobs at will.
We've got bigger fish to fry than this. Don't get into the trenches with your fellow workers fighting while the rich laugh at you
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Cherry picking statistics can show anything.
Cherry picked statistics are the basis of the lawsuit.
From the article: "I just couldn’t believe it. I was angry,” Marilyn Clark, one of the Oracle plaintiffs, told the Guardian. The complaint alleged that she discovered the wage gap when she saw a pay stub a male colleague had left in a common area. “I felt like I had been punched in the gut.” Clark, 66, who has since retired from Oracle, said it was particularly painful because she had even trained the male employee, who was making roughly $20,000 more than she was, amounting to a 22% higher salary. Clark, 66, who has since retired from Oracle, said it was particularly painful because she had even trained the male employee, who was making roughly $20,000 more than she was, amounting to a 22% higher salary."
The reality is this is her own fault. This is not a union job with fixed pay scales.
People make more because they ask for more and create a perception of value.
From my experience, when taking a new job:
Women undervalue themselves and they ask for the comp they think they deserve or is the most the employer is willing to pay
Men ask for what they want, not what they think they deserve, and don't care about the employers problems
When annual comp happens, raises and bonuses can very often be crappy
Women will be unhappy but will not change jobs to get what they want.
Men change jobs aggressively.
In fact, from a management standpoint knowing you will eat shit and not change jobs just provides evidence they are paying you appropriately.
No wonder MGTOW is picking up. Men are getting sick of womens bullshit. Maybe if women choose not to breed until they were financially stable. It is always the women in any work place I have been at that are chronically late, needing to leave early or absent because of their snot nosed offspring. Or absent for months at a time cause they just popped out another one. You made the choice to have that crotch goblin now live with the way it impacts your bottom line.
The important thing to take away here is that increasing equality benefits everyone. Pay should be unrelated to demographics, as should educational opportunities.
Men should be encouraged to stick with education and get those well paid, skilled jobs, and then not burn out in them with excessive hours and stress. Women should not be penalized for getting older or having families.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Could it possible be that women in general, are not as good at negotiating their own salaries as men?
Irrelevant. It is illegal to pay men and women systematically differently based on any other criteria but job performance. Unless they are salespeople or professional negotiators, paying them differently based on "ability to negotiate" is illegal.
Perhaps they aren't as aggressive when asking for raises, etc once they are employed?
Again, willingness to ask for a raise is not a valid criteria for discrimination. Women are less aggressive at asking for raises. So are black people, often because they feel less secure in their job. That doesn't justifiy discrimination.
That's not the companies' fault....
Yes it is.
The important thing to take away here is that increasing equality benefits everyone.
What the fuck? No it doesn't..
Equality of OPPORTUNITY benefits everyone. Equality of OUTCOME benefits only the most unproductive and lazy members of society.
Equality of opportunity exists in Sweden (and most of the Nordic countries), yet the outcome is nearly the same as in the rest of the western world.. Women and Men self segregate. Women are going into the "social" jobs, while men prefer the "physical/mental" jobs. The only way you can possibly remedy this is to force people into jobs they do not want. This isn't speculation, it's observed reality.
When you give men & women the maximum freedom to choose what they want to do for a living, it turns out that they do not want to do the same things..
I'd like to suggest you read this article: https://www.theglobeandmail.co...
Here's a snippet:
The trouble is that the world's most liberated women aren't leaning in – in fact, many are leaning back. They work fewer hours and make less money than men, just as Canadian women do. In fact, Swedish women are much more likely to have part-time jobs and far less likely to hold top managerial positions or be CEOs. On top of that, Scandinavian labour markets are the most gender-segregated in the developed world.
Women do make up 25 per cent of Swedish corporate boards, but only because of quotas. The greatest concentration of senior managers, CEOs and other highly paid power women isn't in Scandinavia. It's here in North America, where working women's lives are much tougher.
It turns out that all these family-friendly policies have an unintended impact on the gender gap, as Kay Hymowitz and many others have noted. By making it easy for women to drop out of the work force and work shorter hours, they make it harder for women to progress in their careers. Swedish men have these options too, but they don't take them. So women don't advance as far as men. And they are also considered less desirable by corporate employers who need people on the job 24/7.
i.e. when you remove all the legal and fiscal barriers, women don't want to work outside the home.. Sweden proves it...