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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.

12 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Case not as strong as you might think by MikeRT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After college, over a decade ago, I interviewed with them on the consulting side. Their compensation structure was all based around work, work, work, bill, bill, bill leading to bonuses and such. It is precisely the sort of environment where the average woman is going to flame out on compensation because few women are going to want to work 20 hours of unpaid overtime to beef up a quarterly bonus. It's an environment made for workaholic men.

    In other words, unless you are one of those people who believe that a workaholic culture is "institutionally sexist," the level of real sexism may very well not pass muster with a federal court.

    1. Re:Case not as strong as you might think by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They're not necessarily behaving illogically until they realize that their extra work isn't translating into additional pay, at which point they shouldn't stick around. If they leave, the only ones who remain are the people who did come out ahead, which just means that the next batch of new employees only see examples of employees who worked extra hard and made big bonuses, further incentivizing this behavior.

      I think Oracle knows exactly what it's doing, and from the perspective of a newly hired employee putting in extra work appears to be a really good idea.

  2. In other news by guruevi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Single women without dependents make 8% more than their male counterparts with same education and experience across the US, in large cities like Atlanta the pay gap is 21%
    Women are 50% more likely to graduate from college.

    Politifact rates it Mostly True solely because they can't find more recent statistics that disprove their narrative.

    Over time, women (as a statistic) make different choices and prefer life over work. They tend to work less hours, take less overtime, are happier, live longer lives and don't die from work-related accidents or diseases (as in >1 percent of work-related deaths are female), they also make only 1-3% less over their lifetime than males (a statistic that reverses when you account for education and single motherhood) but that 3% makes all the difference as this wealth disparity is pretty much concentrated in the top 1%.

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    1. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The unintended consequences are being seen in my example above of the County Commissioner's crusade to hire almost all female to balance a perceived gender-inequality.

      Here's where real-world reality meets the gender-equality feelz. In this locality the county commissioner gets to appoint 8 Direcotrs of various departments. Within one year of being hired, after barely getting their heads wrapped around their new jobs, 3 of those 8 left on their family medical leave for months. 2 waited until the last day of that leave to just resign outright. The other is now unable to work any overtime, routinely arrives late or leaves early (if they come in at all). These are Utilities Direcotors, Public Works Direcotrs, Directors respoinsible for trash pickup, water treatment plants, road maintenance, animal control, etc. These departments are in shambles now and its dramatically effecting normal resident's lives, becoming a public safety issue at this point. There's no one to escalate problems to. No one accountable for anything. Real world stuff, not post-modernist theory. Dare to mention it though and you hate women. The local paper won't even touch it.

  3. Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours by currently_awake · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hiring more workers is cheaper than chronic overtime. Hiring and training new workers is more expensive than keeping your current workers. Unless there is a severe personnel shortage this behavior reduces corporate profitability.

  4. Re:Should be easy to defend by TimothyHollins · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Correlation is not causation. There is no proof that the inclination is caused by biology, nor the degree of productivity.

    I don't know anything about productivity, this is the first time I've heard someone mention it. But the inclination, oh boy.
    https://www.thejournal.ie/gend...
    There's even a wiki page on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    As always, I wouldn't trust the wiki page, but the sources might be interesting.

    Oh, and here's a documentary from the Norwegian state channel. Don't worry, it's subbed in English. It's a good watch, quite explanatory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    So yes, it seems to be heavily influenced by biology, even more so than findings from not-so-equal countries might suggest.

  5. Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I'm not sure if that article does a good job of convincing me of the point it's trying to make.

    Not so for her. Ledesma graduated from college four years ago. After moving through a series of jobs, she now earns $18,000 making pizza at Classic Slice in Milwaukee, shares a two-bedroom apartment with her boyfriend and has $33,000 in student debt.

    Her mother Cheryl Romanowski, 55, was making about $10,000 a year at her age working at a bank without a college education. In today's dollars, that income would be equal to roughly $19,500.

    So, her mother was making about the same amount of money, but just didn't have the added debt. I don't know what Ms. Ledesma chose to major in while she was in college, but I'd bet money it was some useless degree. She should be thankful that the price of that education has only come out to $33,000 as there are plenty of people who've accumulated six figure debts that they realistically have no hope of ever paying off.

    The article also points out that the 20% figure only applies to white millennials, whereas black millennials are about break even (-1.4%) but latino millennials are actually better off (+29%) than their parents were. Although they're a small part of the population, I'd bet the Asian Americans are also up, possibly even more than 29%. People who buy into the notion of white privilege should be happy as it appears that's worth a lot less than it used to be. Otherwise it just looks like economic osmosis.

    Given what example solutions you posted, I don't expect you to agree with this, but I did notice that anything about preventing or curtailing illegal immigration. What do you think happens to wages and the value of unskilled labor when the supply of it increases? I don't want to come off as disparaging these immigrants, as they're often hard workers and not really all that much different in most ways than the majority of our own ancestors who at some point came to this country in hopes of a better life, but most estimates put the number of people who are here illegally at around 10 million, though some are much higher. I don't think it's in any way feasible to even try to "round up" or deport everyone who's here illegally, but I suspect that it would have more of an affect on wages for low or unskilled labor than any of the suggestions that you're proposed.

    So my question is do you care about this particular problem, or are you just using this particular problem as a vehicle to shove your agenda?

  6. Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I hope so too, but it's worth asking why this culture exists in some places and not others. For example it's extremely rare in most of Europe to be working really excessive hours, and in fact the law puts on a hard limit of 48 hours/week and certain mandatory break periods and days off.

    What is it that puts pressure on men to do this in the United States, for example?

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  7. Re:Devil's adocate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Up until today, if Oracle were accused of doing evil thing X, everyone piled in saying "yeah it's Oracle, so probably they did"

    If Oracle are accused of doing evil thing X *that benefits them*, then most Slashdotters will agree that they probably did it.

    But this case doesn't make sense. Why would they pay men extra, if they could hire women at a lower rate to do the same work?

    On the other hand, feminists have also earned themselves a poor reputation - and a spurious lawsuit like his would be entirely consistent with their history. Of the two evils, Oracle is probably, for once, the innocent party here.

  8. Re:put a sock in it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I'm a guy (double checks) -- yes, definitely.

    Okay. It's still a man's world. Really. And females are not mentally engineered or biologically predisposed to work in
    this man's world. That doesn't mean they're not intelligent, weak or anything like that. The women who do succeed
    are basically playing the role of a man. It's something they were able to learn. But they'll never be 100% male.
    The female brain is wired very differently than the male's brain. They can be taught to mimic a male, but they're not
    equipped to think like a male. No woman has ever said "What's the moon like? We should go there someday."

    Honestly, I don't think it's possible to have a completely gender-neutral work / business environment.

    Will females evolve to work in a man's world? Gawd, I hope not. Because we need someone to raise the children,
    and (most) men don't have breasts or the brains to properly raise an infant. If woman will evolve, it'll take hundreds
    of generations to breed out the "female." Will it be worth it?

    You always have to consider the messenger in these sort of things; what are they selling? Embrace the biology you
    were born with and excel in the strengths those qualities provide.

    CAP === 'galaxies' / 'totals'

  9. Re: Should be easy to defend by cayenne8 · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Could it possible be that women in general, are not as good at negotiating their own salaries as men?

    Perhaps they aren't as aggressive when asking for raises, etc once they are employed?

    That's not the companies' fault....

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  10. Re: Should be easy to defend by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There is no proof that the pay difference is caused by gender discrimination as opposed to performance.

    The plaintiffs don't need "proof". This is a civil suit. The outcome is based on the preponderance of the evidence.

    If the disparity is really as wide as the summary claims, Oracle will have a hard time showing it is a statistical fluke.