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.

Comments

put a sock in it

[mapkinase]

seriously, slashdot.

Re:put a sock in it

[msrnash]

Not. Until. The. White. Male. Misoginy. Ends.

Priviledge: Stick A Fork In It.

Re:put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you went down from 2 to -1 within seconds. The troll farms are hard at work. Now the question remains: is it the Berkeley-type SJWs with too much time on their hands, a troll organization funded by the likes of Soros (let's use doublespeak and call it "Progressive Societies" or "Human Advancement Initiative" or some lame strawman name), or is it perhaps BizX itself which comes in and prunes posts and can give itself as many modpoints as it wants to shift the discussion and change how the search engines see results?
 
I give it a 50/50 that my post will be deleted for addressing this again. Take a screen shot, gents!

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is a product of its time and environment. A task oriented product. It probably wont change and people need such companies. A more forward looking company like amazon solves modern problems

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Did these women agree to take a job for a specific rate of pay? They aren't slaves? Then they are paid exactly what they should be being paid. I'm sorry if men are generally better negotiators. Wait, no I'm not. It's not my fault not the fault of men in general.

Re:put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

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'

Re:put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you went down from 2 to -1 within seconds. The troll farms are hard at work. Now the question remains: is it the Berkeley-type SJWs with too much time on their hands, a troll organization funded by the likes of Soros (let's use doublespeak and call it "Progressive Societies" or "Human Advancement Initiative" or some lame strawman name), or is it perhaps BizX itself which comes in and prunes posts and can give itself as many modpoints as it wants to shift the discussion and change how the search engines see results?

Or none of the above. I'm looking for content that advances the discussion or contributes to the general knowledgebase. Vague conspiracy theories, off-the-shelf opprobrium or pejorative paranoia gets ignored or modded down, depending on what kind of a mood I'm in. When it's from A/C it carries even less weight, although I understand why people are afraid to stand up and be counted -- too many loons in the loop. Whatever happened to "agreeing to disagree"?

I give it a 50/50 that my post will be deleted for addressing this again. Take a screen shot, gents!

Re: put a sock in it

[edris90]

Salary? Really! So theses saw the problems of the well-off. Down in the real world , we looked as much as these women are making and the perks and advantage in social engineering endeavors , would be happy for their situation. when it comes to greedy people will always find someone to compare themselves to to say they have more. If we would just Define an amount that is considered enough, you should discard any complaints above income level, focus on those who don't have what they need getting raises.

Re:put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really think Soros-Conspiracy Theories are shining a light on anything. It's good thing he's rich, throwing his money at hiring all these crisis actors... funding studies... cementing in the pizza-basement child sex ring... all those definitely real things that are happening.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

that's assuming the men were even made to negotiate. good chance they just walked in and got given their wage. And let's be real, the men are 'expected' to negotiate and are rewarded for their big cajones. If the women try to negotiate they are seen as ladder climbers, or trying to get above their level and would likely be punished. Tell me it's not true... that if you were sitting there in the chair interviewing that you wouldn't see it that way?

Re:put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Case in point with GP's "theory." Soros *is* on record for doing this garbage. Hired ^ AC trolls ^ spread disinfo.

Re: put a sock in it

[Darinbob]

So as long as you can bamboozle someone, it's all moral!

Re:put a sock in it

[q_e_t]

And just like no woman ever thought of going to the moon no woman has ever thought anything like "How do I conduct a study and present the results effectively for the study on infectious diseases?" or "Radium - how does that work?" or "I wonder what the structure of DNA is", or "What do those signals from outer space mean?". Oh, my bad, they have.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single study supports the gender bias explanation for the gender wage gap.

Stick a fork in it is right.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it's been the law in the US for over 50 years, which Oracle's HR department seems to have accidentally missed? I guess you also feel sympathy for tax dodgers?

Re: put a sock in it

[phantomfive]

Just to be clear, knowing how to negotiate without offending the other person is a skill that needs to be developed. I've more than once made the person I was negotiating with very angry.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the Russians?

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming you're being facetious.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0095399716636928

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Since I used to be a Manager of a group that was required to have the same skills and perform the same job. I can tell you unequivocally that I had no thought along those lines at all.

This is especially true in any company large enough to have an HR department and job roles and levels with dictated pay grades and regular raises of set amounts.

Hell this idea that men have some magical power to negotiate a salary, especially raises differently from women is pure bullocks other than the best of the best who are in demand to other companies than the one they work at. Which would be true whether you're a man or woman.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally hundreds of studies disagree with you.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle's HR department had likely not missed a thing. Which is why they've likely set up levels within every job description and mandatory oay raises for the company based on %.

Do unless you are prepared to leave the company and demonstrate how you deserve to skip a level (really both). Any pay difference has nothing to do with discrimination.

You don't seriously think a company the size of Oracle negotiates yearly pay increases with each individual employee do you?

And when starting with a new company the size if Oracle you're going in to a pay level for the position you're taking. So you have some leeway to negotiate that, but if you aren't prepared to walk away then you'll likely take what they offer, which will likely be the same starting point set by HR regardless of any non relevant physical factors of the individual.

Re:put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Before sticking a fork in it, spell it correctly.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

African-American NASA mathematician Katherine G. Johnson calculated the trajectories for the moon missions and was trusted more than the computers to do the math correctly. https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography

You on the other hand are a fucking moron, if you are such a big man then why the need to double-check your gender? Get the fuck off the internet you imbecile.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed]

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Feminist sponsored studies. The real numbers say otherwise. If women were actually paid less for the same work, companies would only hire women. This equality of outcome nonsense has to stop. If men were paid more on the average, then its probably because they had superior qualifications, not some mythical negotiation skill. You don't "negotiate" if your competition were truly equal in qualification. A company will pay more for someone with more skills and accomplishments.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay inequality is a conspiracy theory of the worst kind. People are getting paid fairly according to their qualifications and accomplishments. If the SJWs wish to make this into a gender battle (that is their brand), then they need to do accurate statistical analysis. Instead of simplifying everything into this false/corrupted narrative that sex is the only metric, they need to instead study why women get paid less. In my professional experience, it's because women dont usually work as hard as men. It's also not just about hours put in but also results. Women love to hide behind college degrees but men still tend to accomplish more because the simple reason that women care more about people and men care more about things. So, while women go home and relax, men typically do intangible things after work such as reading professional trade journals or interact with other like minded people on trade forums like this one.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between being the man that invented the math and the women that merely applied it.

Re: put a sock in it

[dcw3]

that's assuming the men were even made to negotiate. good chance they just walked in and got given their wage

Typical comment from someone who clearly doesn't understand how to negotiate. If you were one of the ones who "walked in and got given their wage" then you're clueless and deserve what you were given. Nobody forced you to accept it.

Re: put a sock in it

[dcw3]

Just to be clear, knowing how to negotiate without offending the other person is a skill that needs to be developed. I've more than once made the person I was negotiating with very angry.

Agreed, but then it can be okay to make the other person angry depending upon the relationship you need to maintain with them. If it's a one-off negotiation (new car purchase for example), who cares. But if it's your future boss, well that's a entirely different story.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Women are almost equally capable as men, however the problem is that they are insecure - unfortunately the source of this insecurity is deep rooted in the biology of humans , to be specific in the nine-month gestation period. This insecurity affects their behavior in all social and work situations. To give just one example, a woman takes greater offense if she is called a fool than actually being fooled. A man is exactly opposite.

Re: put a sock in it

[phantomfive]

Agreed, but then it can be okay to make the other person angry depending upon the relationship you need to maintain with them.

That's true too.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

She co-authored the paper on it, working alongside a man. Wow, who would have thought that people of different genders could actually work together.

Re: put a sock in it

[jpaine619]

There's a difference between specifics and generalities. You are pointing at specifics and trying to use them to disprove the generalities.

If I said "men are stronger than women" (and they are, on average), and you pointed at some Olympic champion female weightlifter and said "Here's your proof that they aren't", you are still wrong.

The GP is absolutely correct regarding the biology of women. They have babies. They cannot afford to take risks.. A mother's first choice is always (generally) to flee with the child. She cannot confront males and she cannot confront childless females. She has to escape danger. A woman with a child will, generally, only fight if she's backed into a corner and has no other options. What relevance is all of this? Simply to point out that not only are we physically different, but we have different thought processes and priorities.

Males and females are equal in intelligence. The differences are how the apply the intelligence. Men are far more action oriented (think shoot first ask questions later), while women are more likely to be of the "we need to consider all options" group.

Continually insisting that men & women are the same isn't enlightened. It isn't progressive. It's stupid. Neither is more valuable than the other, but the value is different due to the fact that men & women are different.

But, by all means, please keep insisting that men and women are identical. May I suggest you also join the Flat Earth Society? They seem to be a group that is also quite happy to ignore facts and the truth.

Re: put a sock in it

[jpaine619]

Oops, clicked reply on the wrong post.. Ignore the duplicate, this is the correct response

There's a difference between specifics and generalities. You are pointing at specifics and trying to use them to disprove the generalities.

If I said "men are stronger than women" (and they are, on average), and you pointed at some Olympic champion female weightlifter and said "Here's your proof that they aren't", you are still wrong.

The GP is absolutely correct regarding the biology of women. They have babies. They cannot afford to take risks.. A mother's first choice is always (generally) to flee with the child. She cannot confront males and she cannot confront childless females. She has to escape danger. A woman with a child will, generally, only fight if she's backed into a corner and has no other options. What relevance is all of this? Simply to point out that not only are we physically different, but we have different thought processes and priorities.

Males and females are equal in intelligence. The differences are how the apply the intelligence. Men are far more action oriented (think shoot first ask questions later), while women are more likely to be of the "we need to consider all options" group.

Continually insisting that men & women are the same isn't enlightened. It isn't progressive. It's stupid. Neither is more valuable than the other, but the value is different due to the fact that men & women are different.

But, by all means, please keep insisting that men and women are identical. May I suggest you also join the Flat Earth Society? They seem to be a group that is also quite happy to ignore facts and the truth.

Re: put a sock in it

[jpaine619]

If we would just Define an amount that is considered enough.....

I hope you're joking.. Socialism doesn't work. Socialism fails 100% of the time. Repeat after me: "Socialism does not work"

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Very insightful and worded much better than I could have done.

CAP === 'interim'

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandatory pay raises? Ha! You clearly donâ(TM)t work for Oracle.

Re: put a sock in it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said

Re: put a sock in it

[edris90]

Look up Norway

Re: put a sock in it

[jpaine619]

Not socialist. Capitalist with heavy taxes, but NOT SOCIALIST. Definitely a welfare state, but that's not socialism.Personally I think the USA qualifies as a welfare state too, but that's my opinion. Norway has one of the lowest rates of market regulation in the western world. It's not lassiez-faire but it's a hell of a lot less regulated than the United States.. Almost makes a case for less market regulation, doesn't it?

One of the accepted hallmarks of Socialism is collective ownership of production. Norway doesn't have that... So.. no...it's a Welfare State

Re: put a sock in it

[edris90]

They are a balance. They safely harness capitalism to generate what they need for socialism. But they keep their capitalism safely regulated and contained within beneficial restraints. But instead of having a wild fires of unrestrained capitalism burning quality to theground,. They use a control reactioned , like we are car engine is powered by explosions but in a controlled contained regulated manner, that makes the engine serve the entire vehicle rather than just the engine. what good is a car without an engine and what good is an engine without a car to attach it to.

Re: put a sock in it

[edris90]

Let's not get lost arguing about semantics. There's certain percentage of the population that are Workaholics due to various psychological instabilities. that part of their brain it supposed to click in and say I have enough is dysfunctional. And the US these mentally ill people have been allowes to wait the system in their favor to the point where there's not enough left for everone else. So if we take a page from norway and heavily prune them then then what was malignant becomes symbiotic.

Re: put a sock in it

[q_e_t]

I have seen very little evidence for women being more or less insecure than men.

Re: put a sock in it

[q_e_t]

Men are far more action oriented (think shoot first ask questions later), while women are more likely to be of the "we need to consider all options" group.

Men are also culturally conditioned to act like that, and woman also. So saying that men and women tend to behave that way doesn't necessarily say anything about any innate qualities.

Re: put a sock in it

[jpaine619]

I'll give you the "also". There is some social pressure, but as Sweden is showing us, it doesn't account for a whole hell of a lot.

Re: put a sock in it

[jpaine619]

And the US these mentally ill people have been allowes to wait the system in their favor to the point where there's not enough left for everone else.

Your logic is flawed. The system isn't a pie that's divided up and portioned out. Brand new wealth is created constantly. The "pie" is constantly getting larger.. But please keep blaming the successful for your failures.

I really love how you have equated ambition and drive with a mental illness. I suppose the lazy or unambitious are virtuous?

That same drive that can create an real estate tycoon can also create a world class brain surgeon.. Or a piano virtuoso. Just depends on how the person chooses to focus it..

Your general "shtick" is that the successful people are out to get you and wanting to be the best is a mental illness. I'm done with you...

Re: put a sock in it

[edris90]

It's not the wealthy people are out to get me and stuck there willing to sacrifice everyone else for their own benefit. Different motivation, same functional end result. Wealth is when you have Roland and means to provide for yourself and graduate from the economy because you became self-sustaining. It's the equivalent to exiting the casino while you're still ahead and leave in the rest for others.

Re: put a sock in it

[edris90]

Correction. Edson that they are proactively willing to sacrifice everyone elses well being if necessary to get what they want. Getting what they want never does any good because they just want more, meaning every bitter resource consumed by them above their basic needs are wasted as it is not provided any sustainability of satisfaction. So they could be at the same relative level of dissatisfaction at a much lower cost, all the same amount of resources redirected to people higher potential to be satisfied results in higher relative being of the general populace , demonstrated a more healthy and successful people.

Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

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 than their hairy male counterparts. If this were a restaurant or hotel I would be worried; this lawsuit should be thrown out of court quickly.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[mark-t]

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

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlation is not causation. There is no proof that the pay difference is caused by gender discrimination as opposed to performance.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

No, correlation is not causation. until a smoking-gun email from Larry Ellison turns up...but Iâ(TM)m sure that never happened..

Re:Should be easy to defend

[TimothyHollins]

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.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[hey!]

This of course is why we have trials. You select a jury who has the fewest or at least the most minimally entrenched preconceptions and have at it.

It's not clear to me at all that this would be an easy suit to defend against; nor is it clear to me that it's an easy suit to win. It depends on specifics, doesn't it? Even if you believe that its a consequence of nature that women are on average paid less than men, that doesn't mean some sufficiently idiotic management might not discriminate against individual women on the basis of sex rather than ability. Nor would it stretch the bounds of credibility that they might leave some kind of paper trail that exposes them. None of that is mutually exclusive with the hypothesis that men on average are better engineers.

Now here's what I think, based on what I know about Oracle from having been an Oracle business partner. The corporate culture of Oracle is greedy and ruthless. It is (or at least was ten years ago) predicated on locked in customers having to put up with Oracle's shit. I think if there were an assumption that women are less marketable than men, they wouldn't hesitate to exploit that. Whether they violated laws is another question, and whether they did it in a way that can be proved is yet another.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Study after study has shown that women are biologically less inclined in technology ...

References are required as most of us find this highly unlikely and will tend to ignore it. Extraordinary claims require at least some evidence to be taken seriously.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[sjames]

You flunk statistics.

IF those studies are valid, they would show that you might find fewer women at a given level of inclination, but those you did find would be just as good as their male counterparts.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[cayenne8]

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....

Re:Should be easy to defend

[s4080326]

Correlation is good enough to justify discovery, Once the lawyers get their hands on performance reviews/productivity stats and whatever else then we can see what the truth is. Unfortunately regardless of the truth we will only ever see a settlement with no admission of guilt and a big fat NDA.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[s4080326]

There was an interesting study that showed this. The more interesting part is that women were equal in negotiating salaries for a third party to men were but less good at negotiating their own. This leads towards an argument that women often undervalue their own contribution in comparison to men.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

In general/statistically, men are more aggressive. That is all their numbers say.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[Ol Olsoc]

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

These studies though, are either flawed, or the reporting is.

One of the very first things that is needed is to define what constitutes equal pay. Equal pay by productivity, or equal pay by job description, or equal pay for everyone regardless of job/career.

Might seem obvious, but that is how we come up with all of the wildly varying numbers of disparity in pay.

Now this doesn't mean that Oracle isn't discriminating against women pay wise, but if my University setting experience over 30 plus years has anything meaningful to it, one of the first generalized differences between the sexes is that the males tend to use less sick days, and often vacation days. They have a tendency to come in early and stay late more often than the females. This does have a tendency to enable higher productivity. As well, when dangerous or dirty work or work that required travel came up - it was the males (in my work, mostly me) that got the task.

Then there is longevity. I was there a lot longer, as well as more productive. I didn't use sick days, and two weeks out of a month and a half vacation.

Now tell me that someone coming in should be paid the same as me, and why.

As I noted earlier, I don't have enough data to make a good judgement on the issue. But there are some red flags, such as the "base" pay discrepancy. Base is base. So who knows?

But as I told my supervisor when some women thought they should be paid as much as me even though they refused to travel, come in early or stay late. "Let me know if you start paying them the same as me. That's when I'll hand in this letter of resignation. " Annnnnd that's how My job description was changed.

note: one thiing that is very likely involved is based in that meeting. I was telling him that B would happen if A happened. There have been some studies that would indicate that men (in general) are better at negotiating raises and job actions. Better defined as more aggressive. When I listened to the woman who was promoting the study, it was done in defense of women getting paid the same as men, and that employers should be sensitive to the less aggressive approach and adjust their raises accordingly.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Ol Olsoc]

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....

Funny, but as I was saying in a post above, I was listneing to a woman who did a study that was claiming just that. Men are more aggressive in the negotiations in general. I know I was damn assertive in my reviews and raise expectations.

The interesting part I noted to her was that women are claimed to be better communicators than men.

Anyhow, before the apologists jump on me like alligators on a wildebeest, this woman was performing a study to show that managers should take that into account, and give women larger raises than they would otherwise - she was arguing for women.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[Antique Geekmeister]

Sadly, even successful lawsuits can be "spun". This lawsuit seems ripe for political abuse: objecting to the lawsuit can be seen by the most ardent of political feminists as attacks on politically correct thought, as misogyny, or as confirmation of the bias. Failure of the lawsuit can be seen by some as confirmation that female work is, indeed, less valuable than male work. And the "discovery" in a lawsuit is not normally about scientific fact, but rather about what evidence can be compelled from the opposing side and their legal counsel.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[serviscope_minor]

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

Yes it is, according to the law.

Ability to negotiate a salary has no bearing on a programmer's performance, therefore if there's a systematic bias it is absolutely the company's fault. The law is crystal clear in this regard.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

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 discrimination. Characterizing it as discrimination, with the implication of active bias, is not helpful. It's a systemic issue resulting in women getting lesser compensation and it should be addressed. But that doesn't make it discrimination.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

>on "ability to negotiate" is illegal.

Law citation needed.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[cayenne8]

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.

Well, how do you propose it works then?

I mean, I don't really know of any company, that pays everyone with same job title exactly the same.

Employee 1 comes in, and negotiates to work for the company for $50K a year.

Employee 2 comes in and negotiates to work for the company for $45K a year.

Employee 3 comes in and negotiates to work for the company for $55K a year.

All employees are hired one with the salary they agreed to....

That's how it works.

So all 3 employees work for years there, each getting a 5% raise each year.

Alll things being equal, the person that negotiated the best salary, will always be paid the most.

Now, what if employee 2, valued themselves the least starting out...who's fault is that?

If that was a woman, she'll always be paid less than 1 an 3.

Let's say 1 and 3 are both men.

Well, #3 will always be paid more than #1.....

So, where's the discrimination there? There is none.

The company wants to get as much work out of you for the least amount of money, that's how it works, and it is up to YOU as the individual to negotiate to get the best deal you can for yourself and to know your self worth, etc.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[cayenne8]

Yes it is, according to the law.

Ability to negotiate a salary has no bearing on a programmer's performance, therefore if there's a systematic bias it is absolutely the company's fault. The law is crystal clear in this regard.

It is not...there are also MEN that get paid more and less than other men too.

See my example above.

If all things are equal, and 3 employees all negotiate their starting salary, and they are all different.

If all things are equal during their stay and they all get 5% raises annually....they they ALL will be still paid at different rates, with some getting more than other.

Men get more money than some others, just like some women will to.

It is up to each individual to know their market worth.

Of course my example is a simplistic one to drive a point, I know other things come into play, like experience, and seniority.

Heck, it isn't fair that some times, new employees can come in, doing same job as older employees, but start off making more than the legacy employees. It just happens, that's why people often job hop so they can raise their salaries faster.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

Characterizing it as discrimination, with the implication of active bias, is not helpful.

Discrimination against a protected class is illegal whether it is "active" or not.

Most discrimination is passive, and unintentional. That doesn't make it legal.

People identify with and tend to socialize with people like themselves. So if management is full of white guys, they will mentor and promote other white guys. The company should have an active process to ensure this is not discriminatory. If they don't, they're gonna wind up in court, and a class action lawyer will get a big check.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[_Sharp'r_]

Unless of course hiring managers gave affirmative action-style preferences to female candidates. Then on average, the female candidates actually hired wouldn't be as good as their male counterparts, because lower quality female candidates could get hired right along with the better ones (which do exist).

How likely is it that a company which has their executives openly publish blog posts like this, who spend a bunch of money every year promoting Oracle Women’s Leadership’s, who have special programs to highlight, reward and praise their female staff isn't also giving preferences trying to hire as many women as they possibly can.

I've been in the technology for 30+ years, across a dozen different giant, large and small employers. I've never seen any of them do anything in regards to hiring women except basically automatically hire any bare minimum qualified female applicant who showed up, because they all wanted more women in technology.

And yes, as a hiring manager myself, despite knowing the supposed wage gap is B.S., despite knowing studies show women generally get preferred hiring status, I'd probably still lean towards hiring a woman over a man if their resumes and interviews were equal, just to have them around the team.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

I mean, I don't really know of any company, that pays everyone with same job title exactly the same.

That's fine. There is no requirement to "pay everyone the same". There is also no general law against discrimination based on hair length, nose rings, or shoe size. But there are laws against systematic discrimination based on gender, race, and religion.

If that was a woman, she'll always be paid less than 1 an 3.

That's fine. 1 out of 3 is not enough to show any sort of systematic discrimination.

But if you have 100 female engineers, and 300 male engineers, and the females are paid less despite equal performance reviews, you aren't going to get out of a lawsuit by saying "Hey, they were bad negotiators".

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

If the base rate is the same and the man argues for a higher amount due to being a better negotiator that is legal.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineers in engineering environments and other "non-salespeople" do need negotiation skills in their day to day jobs. They need to negotiate with peers to design and implement features on multi-person projects, they need to negotiate with more senior members of their organization to promote their ideas over other's ideas if there are resource constraints, they need to negotiate with IT on policy exceptions, they need to negotiate with management to transfer to projects/teams where they feel they would contribute more (or just enjoy more), etc.

Esp. in senior positions in development, engineers spend quite a bit of their time negotiating for resources and favored solutions.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

If the base rate is the same and the man argues for a higher amount due to being a better negotiator that is legal.

If one man does this, it is legal. If 100 men do this, and your company now has a systematic pay difference between equally qualified men and women, that is not legal. The police are not going to come and kick your door down, but if you get sued by a class action lawyer, you are likely to lose.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

Was "negotiating skills" listed in the job advertisement? Is it part of the written job description? Is it a criteria in performance reviews? Do those performance reviews document that women are indeed worse at their jobs?

If not, you are going to have a hard time convincing a judge that you have a valid excuse for paying men more.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what the lawsuit is about. It's about pay differences between gender. If being male is correlated with higher pay when controlling for performance and ability, it is illegal. That's what systematic means here.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming they're equally qualified but when a company had to make an effort to get those women in there in the first place... It's likely they were hiring the best of the women they could find but that says nothing about comparison with the men. There are simply less women in the tech job pool so when a company tries to hit it's diversity numbers, it would take too long if they only hired the best women -- and executives need their diversity bonuses!

And the same would apply to men in a female-dominated field that was trying to hire more men to hit diversity numbers and had to pick up not the best men for the job to get there. I expect the men as a group would get paid less than the majority of qualified women there.

All that said .... Affirmative action done right means you also have to ensure you're paying the diversity hires the same as your normal hires or else you get into exactly this trouble. It's only 4% ...

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had a white, straight, male manager in the last 10 years. Of 14 professional years. Can I get some loving ?

Oh. It's just other people. I get it.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamn you make the world a shitty place to live. Can't wait to time card every 5 minutes so the hr / bean counters can make everyone feel awesome.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

You're assuming they're equally qualified

No, that is not an assumption. If there is a quality difference, you can pay differently. But if both men and women get 80% perfect marks on their performance reviews, you are going to have a hard time arguing in court that the men are better and deserved more money.

If the women are lower quality, they should have worse performance reviews, more written warnings to improve, and documented lower productivity. If they are developers, do they have fewer code commits? Are they more likely to fail code reviews? Does their code have more bugs?

When you go to court, you need objective evidence.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlation IS causation you fucking blowhard

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, willingness to ask for a raise is not a valid criteria for discrimination.

Sorry guys, we can't hire the new guy as he wants about $20k more on average than the rest of the department, even though he has the experience in X, Y, and Z we've been looking for to help compete in the market. The problem is we'd have to pay all the people with vaginas (don't worry about the ones without vaginas - suckers!) more to keep the average up in case of a bullshit lawsuit, so he'd effectively cost us $380k per year more than the average personnel in the department.

I guess... negotiated salaries are a tool of the 1%? Right? I guess I should expect to see a couple hundred million people publicly announce their salary as they come to this same conclusion over the next couple of months, so that the situation can be rectified.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

It is illegal to pay people differently based on government-determined protected statuses, which are:

• Race
• Color
• Religion or creed
• National origin or ancestry
• Sex
• Age
• Physical or mental disability
• Veteran status
• Genetic information
• Citizenship

Ability to negotiate is not listed.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[serviscope_minor]

It is not...there are also MEN that get paid more and less than other men too.

Irelevant, the law says nothing about that unless there's some othe protected characteristic involved.

See my example above.

You don't seem to understand the law. Hypotheticals or pointing out related but irleevant hold in the law is going to count for squat in front of a judge.

It is up to each individual to know their market worth.

And yet the law is quite clear in this regard.

Of course my example is a simplistic one to drive a point, I know other things come into play, like experience, and seniority.

The law allows for that. Anything that affects your ability to do a job is taken into acconut. If all the men are more senior than the women then it's perfectly legal to have pay disparity (it might say something abou your hiring practices, but that's another topic).

Heck, it isn't fair that some times, new employees can come in, doing same job as older employees, but start off making more than the legacy employees. It just happens, that's why people often job hop so they can raise their salaries faster

You seem to have a fundamantal undestand gap here. You can't eason you way aound the law. No matter how illogical you think the law is, it still stands. I'm not trying to argue the merit or othewise of the law in this post, I'm telling you that the law is clear.

You keep trying to tell me the law is wrong, but that doesn't make it unclear. And being wrong or illogical doesn't stop it existing.

Like I said the law is clear. If you don't like it you can lobby your representative.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[AmiMoJo]

The law doesn't consider nature to be a factor. All it says is that people should be paid the same regardless of their gender, for equal work. That can include factors like experience level and time seniority.

The idea that men are on average better engineers is not considered and not a possible defence. It's really hard to see how they could have any plausible excuse.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[AmiMoJo]

When negotiating with new hires or handing our raises, the company needs to consider other employee's pay as well. If some candidates are undervaluing themselves then they need to offer them more money anyway, simple as that.

ShanghaiBill is right, trying to argue "she was a worse negotiator in the interview!" isn't a legally valid excuse and won't get you off the hook.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful, the leftists SJWs may find where you live and get violent. You are speaking too much truth. Can't talk about truth if it offends them. Oh, and no real science because that too could be offensive to their idealogy.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you are joking.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[mark-t]

There is no scientific study which is not fundamentally flawed that strongly supports the notion that there is some actual biological connection between being male or female and the likelihood of interest in STEM. At the very least, if that were true, any observed correlation would certainly be *dramatically* stronger than what it actually is observed to be.

No, it is in fact much more likely to be the consequences of societal pressures, whether they are unintentional or not, to conform to expected modes of behavior.

But that causative factor, is sociological, not biological.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

the bias is based on your ability to negotiate, not your sex.

depending on the specific group of men and women it will skew one way or the other when divided by sex

Re:Should be easy to defend

[TimothyHollins]

Yes, if you ignore all the studies then there are no studies that show the clear and distinct biological connection, that is correct.

Well done.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[LordAba]

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

Yes it is, according to the law.

Ability to negotiate a salary has no bearing on a programmer's performance, therefore if there's a systematic bias it is absolutely the company's fault. The law is crystal clear in this regard.

So they should... what? Pay all employees equally to the highest earner? Pay all employees equal to the lowest? Continually reward failure, or ignore success?

If raises are percentage based, how can there NOT be discrimination. If group X is worse at negotiating initial salary, how do you propose to remedy it with a flat structure? How do you prevent men and women who are good at negotiation from jumping ship?

Re: Should be easy to defend

[butchersong]

Why not? Certainly most men I know are more disagreeable and willing to jump ship especially if single. I don't think many would argue that women are not more risk averse. It isn't even then about negotiating. My management knows that I expect certain things and that I'm fairly comfortable leaving if I don't get them. This isn't anything I've formally "negotiated" it is simply evident when you interact with me.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[butchersong]

Are you serious? You would only need to google something like "study Men and things women and people" to get myriad results to support this. It is observable in every culture. Even setting this aside, you still would need to ignore iq distribution in which men have a wider curve giving them more in the higher IQ range.. I'm not trying to be an ass but you'd need to be living under a rock to believe what you posted.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[mark-t]

No, in the studies which you refer to, they may show there to be a distinct correlattive factor between gender and likelihood of inclination towards STEM, but there is no reason to conclude that it is actually caused by biology. As I said, if it were, the correlation would be dramatically stronger than what it has ever been observed to be.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Wulf2k]

Do women pay more for used cars?

If so, is this discrimination?

Re:Should be easy to defend

[LordAba]

The law doesn't consider nature to be a factor. All it says is that people should be paid the same regardless of their gender, for equal work. That can include factors like experience level and time seniority.

The idea that men are on average better engineers is not considered and not a possible defence. It's really hard to see how they could have any plausible excuse.

It seems like you contradict yourself. If Oracle can show that most men work more / take less time off / etc, etc. than they are clear: the work is NOT equal. Not saying they will show this, not saying there isn't discrimination, but I am saying that this is clearly to argue it.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

>paying them differently based on "ability to negotiate" is illegal.

Have you worked anywhere at all? No companies pay flat-out same salaries, even for new college grads entering the workforce at the same company, with the same job functions. Right off the bat, the difference of 20% ain't uncommon because some people just negotiate better.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess. You shout correlation doesnâ(TM)t imply causation when your car parked outside is wet after it rains. Correlation doesnâ(TM)t always imply causality - but itâ(TM)s a damn good clue to investigate.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

The company wants to get as much work out of you for the least amount of money, that's how it works

Which also means companies should hire more women than men!

Hiring men costs more :)

Re:Should be easy to defend

[AmiMoJo]

I don't know how it works in the US, but here your employer can't penalize you for taking time off for holidays you are owed or for illness unless certain fairly strict conditions are met.

The other problem they will run into with that argument is the way they measure performance. If it values unhealthy over-working it would be considered to be part of the problem and invalidate their argument.

Basically the assumption is that men and women are equally capable of doing the job, so you will have an uphill battle proving otherwise. Companies are expected to take steps to eliminate the things that might create the differences, such as an overtime culture or poor work/life balance, not use them as an excuse.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[mark-t]

Such studies can only objectively affirm that there appears to be some, perhaps even significant, correlative factor, but do *NOT* affirm that the causative factor that might relate them is in any way biological.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[TimothyHollins]

Yes, there is every reason to consider it biological. The whole reason the video uses Norway as an example is because it is the most gender-equal country in the world by far. There is absolutely no incentive for men or women to take traditional roles there, and there is every incentive for them to take non-traditional roles. The sociological factors would push them towards the exact professions they aren't pursuing, which leaves only biological factors. And those are getting even stronger when money is no longer an issue. Look at Iran for instance. Way more female programmers down there. Are they further along in equality? Nope. But programming there is one of the few ways women can gain some independence, so they go for it. Why are there so few female programmers in Norway? Because they are free to choose what they want, and programming doesn't come with any incentive towards more money or independence.

But you don't even need that to see the obvious disparities in all countries that are approaching gender equality. Look at field by gender in the Nordic countries and you will see that there are "male" and "female" professions even after all the incentives to break those stereotypes. Why are there so many females in biology but barely any in electrical engineering even after the implementation of quotas, studies-to-job guarantees, fast-lanes etc and over 15 years of equality indoctrination? Because women don't enjoy electrical engineering, and the guarantee of an unappealing job doesn't do much in a country where no one has to starve.

Men and women aren't the same, biologically. Any biologist can tell you that. The links I posted tell you that.
What I don't understand is how anyone could possibly think that we are different when it comes to hormones, genitals, brain, mammaries, bone structure, reproductive function, immune system, aesthetics, muscle, instinct, behavioral tendencies, and size, but suddenly when it comes to preferences we're all the same and it's all sociological. It' such an odd cut-off, and it makes no sense.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[ShanghaiBill]

Do women pay more for used cars?

If so, is this discrimination?

It may be discrimination, but it is not illegal. Anti-discrimination laws apply to employment, housing, and lending. They don't apply to buying products.

There is no general law against discrimination. There are only laws against discrimination in specific situations against specific protected classes of people.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Were the people in the study entirely separated from existing societal influences? Given the pervasive nature of such influences it is very hard to account for the influence in studies, and so the causation of differences in inclination are hard to determine, and the degree of causation, given that results may be multifactorial.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[mark-t]

I wasn't suggesting otherwise.... I was specifically addressing the allegation only that it is the biological aspect of being a man or woman that somehow influences a person's tendency towards choosing a technical career. This is an entirely unproven concept.... I do not allege that there is no validity to the claimed correlation between gender and occupation, but there are numerous sociological factors at play which are going to be far more of a consequence of living in a particular society as a particular gender than what chromosomes a person happens to be born with... to such an extent, in fact, that any apparent observed biological influence in that regard ultimately falls well below the levels of statistical significance, and is more likely attributable to apophenia.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be stupid. Our market conditions change.

Let's say programmers were making 80K at a company in 2010. Fast forward to 2018, new employees at the same company are starting at 120K. What's "illegal" about any of this? And how do you even suggest what the solution should be? Suddenly the old-timers making 80K should get a 50% raise or what?

Re: Should be easy to defend

[serviscope_minor]

So they should... what?

Um.. abide by the law for one.

Continually reward failure, or ignore success?

How about not being stupid about it? You went from "not based on negotation ability" to "reward failure". How about paying based on performance. That's 100% legal.

If group X is worse at negotiating initial salary,

Negotiating ability is irrelevant to job performance of a programmer. So if you started that way it was already against the law. Fix your hiring process. How hard is this to understand?

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Bengie]

Unless you're bean counting, performance reviews are subjective. The fundamental problem is quality matters and measuring quality of intangible things is a bit difficult. One programmer finishes projects faster but more issues crop up using their projects but nothing is technically "wrong" and another programmer is 1/2 the speed of the first, but their projects seem to have no issues.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[sjames]

The AC I was replying to was claiming a gender wide deficit in technology skills.

Re:Should be easy to defend

[jpaine619]

Bullshit.. Sweden is our test case right now.. Maximum opportunity and maximum self segregation between the sexes in the labor force.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[jpaine619]

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?

Possible? This is settled science. This has been known for 20+ years.. Women SUCK at negotiation. They're terrible at it. But, they also have different priorities IN GENERAL (sorry for the caps, but some people can't seem to understand that when speaking about groups of people (women) in broad statements like this, we're talking about generalities and not specifics.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[jpaine619]

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.

Bullshit. Well, let's say "bullshit for many jurisdictions". Asking for a raise is a negotiation. It's as simple as that. Now, if you said "All men get a raise after 2 months and women get a raise after 6 months" sure.. That's illegal as fuck.. But if you don't have scheduled raises and instead hand them out when an employee can justify it.. Well, the women (in general) aren't going to ask for them. Men (in general) will.. Giving people who can justify a raise is not illegal.. Just have your documentation in order..

Re: Should be easy to defend

[jpaine619]

There are only laws against discrimination in specific situations against specific protected classes of people.

I hope you understand the hypocrisy of that.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[cayenne8]

If some candidates are undervaluing themselves then they need to offer them more money anyway, simple as that.

Ok, so then you are advocating with making laws forcing companies to pay EVERYONE with a same job title exactly the same....no more negotiation for salaries?

Re: Should be easy to defend

[AmiMoJo]

One option is to have pay scales, where people doing the same or very similar jobs are all within a range based on their time at the company. They may start higher up the scale based on experience, which is fine as long as it is applied evenly to everyone.

But yes, basically the practice of negotiating salaries needs to be retired and companies offer a fair rate. That's actually good for existing employees too, because if the market rate goes up and the company wants to remain competitive they need to give everyone decent raises, otherwise they won't be able to offer market rate to new hires.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[cayenne8]

One option is to have pay scales, where people doing the same or very similar jobs are all within a range based on their time at the company. They may start higher up the scale based on experience, which is fine as long as it is applied evenly to everyone. But yes, basically the practice of negotiating salaries needs to be retired and companies offer a fair rate. That's actually good for existing employees too, because if the market rate goes up and the company wants to remain competitive they need to give everyone decent raises, otherwise they won't be able to offer market rate to new hires.

So, you're saying the govt needs to take over for private companies, and dictate and enforce not only hiring practices, but also salaries......

Geez, at that point, you're only a couple of steps by having the govt own and manage private industry and all of us becoming defacto government employees.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[LordAba]

How about not being stupid about it? You went from "not based on negotation ability" to "reward failure". How about paying based on performance. That's 100% legal.

Stupid about it? Lets see, there are two cases here. Either Oracle are being sexist; great put them against the wall. Maybe Oracle isn't sexist and the pay difference is based on initial salary negotiations and performance. Yes it does reward failure, as women who train in salary negotiation tend to have higher starting salaries than men. Men in turn tend to work more hours, meaning more performance. It evens out.

Basically just say what you mean: that the initial salary should be set and non-negotiated no matter what. I disagree with you, initial salaries should have some room for negotiation to reward those who use it and provide incentive for people with experience to get those positions. Sometimes it sucks, but there it is.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[AmiMoJo]

That's how it works in Europe, and we haven't turned Communist yet.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[serviscope_minor]

Lets see, there are two cases here. Either Oracle are being sexist; great put them against the wall.

sure.

Maybe Oracle isn't sexist and the pay difference is based on initial salary negotiations

If that gives you a gender bias then you have a problem and have done something illegal. Salary negotiation is unrelated to performance of a developer so if you see a gender bias due to salary negotiation then it's unrelated to performance and hence against the law.

Performance related bias is allowed. Anything else isn't. If you're relying heavily on salary negotiations then you're leaving yourself open for a lawsuit.

I don't make the law, but I'm telling you how it works. You're trying to argue the rationality of the law with me when I' trying to tell you how it works. Yes, that is stupid, because courts do not enforce the letter of the law.

I disagree with you, initial salaries should

Should doesn't come into it. If you're paying women less than men for anything unrelated to performance then you're inviting a lawsuit. And you'll lose, because the law is clear.

Re: Should be easy to defend

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this to some extent and while this is no scientific inference but just personal experience. Most women I know have not ever negotiated a salary, they typically took what was on offer. Whereas most men I know always tried to negotiate their offer, never taking the first one and typically getting more. It's no secret that a company is going to try to offer the lowest it feels it can get away with and it is up to the candidate to convince them that they should be getting more than that.

It could very well be that women are just not as aggressive in salary negotiations as men on average

Trump 2020

[Anonymous Coward]

Grab em by the pussy. #MMGA

Re: Trump 2020

[Anonymous Coward]

Got him by the balls, every woman ever bragging about their control over men.

Double standard much??

Just curious...

[Sooner Boomer]

...what software did they use to do the analysis? I see the effects of a possible kosmic karma-slam here.

d@o7l

[Anonymous Coward]

Th3se early

Equal opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:Equal opportunity

[sjames]

The computer is only as good as it's programming. Dig deep enough and you will find some sort of proxy for gender that the software was using as part of the determination.

Re:Equal opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

...or you might find there are other reasons for the "computer" to make a non-PC decision.

Re:Equal opportunity

[jpaine619]

Oh fuck off....

Re: Equal opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but facts are facts.

Re: Equal opportunity

[Sid314]

A computer ... fed with biased historical data will output biased results. âoeOn a computerâ isnâ(TM)t a clean disclaimer

Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Do single, childless men who don't miss work to take care of sick kids get extra pay? No. In my experience people with kids are granted a HUGE amount of leeway taking time off while if a childless worker were to ask for similar accommodations/time off they would be shown the door. Having children is a choice and an opportunity cost is exactly what it is and should be.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

"Salary is not simply a function of the job. It also depends on your resume and experience"

Exactly. Early in my career, I asked for a raise after I had proven myself. The boss pulled out a booklet with education level and years of experience, pointed to the corresponding table cell, and exclaimed "THAT is what you're worth". I said nothing, landed a job somewhere else making $15k more.

Some might say "but you're a white man, why didn't the boss just GIVE you the raise with all that privilege you are oozing?" Because that's bullshit - you need to fight for what you want.

Re:Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

Devil's adocate

Wow, just wow.

Up until today, if Oracle were accused of doing evil thing X, everyone piled in saying "yeah it's Oracle, so probably they did", or "that's nothing, Oracle fucked me over with evil thing Y and that's worse, so fuck Oracle".

There's pretty much nothing people would defend Oracle for and everyone was prepared to assume the worse based on a long and storied history of incredibly shitty behaviour. Basically on one here would give Oracle the benefit of the doubt because they thoroughly squandered any benefit as anyone who's suffered under an Oracle system knows.

Seems completely possible to me that a 4% difference could simply be explained by the opportunity cost of maternity leave.

Yeah anything's possible. On the other hand, Oracle has a rich history of fucking over ayone the can get their tentacles on, so it's entirely reasonable to assume the worst of them until proven othrewise.

Oracle are not a human and they're not in a court of law, so we don't have to presume they're innocent. If a known fucker is accused of being a fucker, it's absolutely fine to assume they are indeed a total fucker.

This is Oracle. They're dicks. About everything. Fuck them they're most likely guilty of this.

Re: Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

The flip side to that is that single people without kids have much higher job mobility. Itâ(TM)s easy to pack yourself up and walk out the door, move to another city, etc for a new job.

When you factor in a job of a spouse as well as pulling kids out of school, the options see a major shift and you get two things.

1. If that person leaves for another job, thereâ(TM)s a high likelihood of it being local and possibly a competitor.

2. Because of the reduced likelyhood if leaving if the employee is happy, the business has a higher incentive to invest in them and know that the investment will pay off.

Re:Devil's adocate

[JaredOfEuropa]

It depends on what the study means by "similar jobs". If you simply compare average salaries of males and females in Oracle, that opportunity cost would show up there. But that cost often manifests itself as a hiatus in on-the-job knowledge or missed career opportunities. The female software engineer who chooses to have a kid instead of taking that promotion to lead engineer, should earn as much as her male software engineer colleagues (with similar skills) when she returns to the job. If that's how you compare wages, the opportunity cost of maternity leave shouldn't show up.

Re: Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are equally shitty to their customers and employees.

Thinking there is sexism behind everything is just lazy bullshit sjw talking points.

Either do the research CORRECTLY, to backup your "theories" or just STFU.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Oracle fucks everyone then it follows that Oracle is fucking the males too.

Re:Devil's adocate

[alvinrod]

I think the takeaway that even though people believe Oracle is evil, they're simply more skeptical about wage gap bull crap.

I'll believe that Oracle will try to fuck over anyone they can, but I'd have to ask why they aren't also fucking over their male employees?

We all get they're evil, but are they the kind of chaotic evil such that they have intentionally chosen to fuck over men slightly less than they otherwise could just for shits and giggles? Do they get more evil utility out of stirring the pot to piss off feminists or something like that?

Re:Devil's adocate

[geekymachoman]

> This is Oracle. They're dicks. About everything. Fuck them they're most likely guilty of this.

Just because people shit on Oracle usually, and not now, does not mean this is valid.

Google is dicks too, MS too, Amazon too. Everything they do, is for their own profit bottom line aka "they're dicks".

You should've been rated "offtopic", because them being dicks have nothing to do with most probably false lawsuits.

Wage gap because of gender exclusively is a myth. Wage gap do exist of course, but there are many reasons for it... saying that gender is a reason, is fucking stupid.

Re:Devil's adocate

[phantomfive]

O.R.A.C.L.E: One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

Just because people shit on Oracle usually, and not now, does not mean this is valid.

Doesn't mean it is. On the other hand Oracle hav been such evil bastards that there's a strong prior in believing they have done whatever the hell they're accused of.

Google is dicks too, MS too, Amazon too.

Sure, but not like Oracle. Oracle has a true, visceral hatred of their customers (even worse than Sony) not to mention the poor bastards who then actually have to use their stinking, shitty products. Oracle seem to hate their employees too.

You should've been rated "offtopic",

Yes, because it's best to not hear opinions you disagree with.

because them being dicks have nothing to do with most probably false lawsuits.

You're guessing on the "probably false bit". And having a history of screwing over everyone they can does have a bearing on whether it's likely the indeed screwed over some people.

Re:Devil's adocate

[HornWumpus]

They are all dicks, but Oracle is at another level. Their marketing and licencing in particular.

The exceptionally evil part of Oracle is marketing. Which I will bet has more than its share of females. Boobies and blowjobs being good for sales and all.

Not as good as a future 'no show job' for the decider at 10x pay though. All those massively overpaid no show jobs have to distort the stats. I'll bet they aren't classified as tech, rather marketing.

Re:Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

I think the takeaway that even though people believe Oracle is evil, they're simply more skeptical about wage gap bull crap.

I'm pretty sure those people would be more skeptical of a story about a wage gap than a story accusing Larry Ellison's lawyers of eating babies. Personally, I think there's only about a 10 percent chance of the latter and anyway they were only drinking the blood.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no concept of a real job you old dust shitting idiot and you don't know any females because they ALL know you're a disgusting fat shitforbrains libertarian retard. Women don't waste their time with you, no wonder you're so INCEL.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle are not a human and they're not in a court of law, so we don't have to presume they're innocent.

No, we don't have to. We don't have to have any principles of discourse, debate, or civility whatsoever. We are free to dismantle whatever shared values or civil ethics we want so long as we're not crossing some arbitrary line into pre-legalities. After all, it's much easier to get the state to give you what you want if you've already smothered all public opposition through the tactics of choice.

This is Oracle. They're dicks. About everything. Fuck them they're most likely guilty of this.

Oracle's corporate dickery pales in comparison to the naked black-shirt fascism being promoted by the likes of yourself and the media and commentators who promote this Robespierre-esque crap. Couldn't you just be honest about it, get organised, and start petrol bombing your opposition instead. The long term damage to the public sphere will be less than your current strategy.

And fuck you for making Oracle look reasonable in comparison.

Re: Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

When did this become high school? When did it become cool to fuck women and brag about it? I keep hearing people call people incels like that's a bad thing. The sad part is, the people calling others incels, are probably the virgins. Us nerds used to get called virgins all time. Now the nerds are calling each other incels.

The rich have won this war.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

On the one hand, yes, Oracle is pure evil and would absolutely underpay women if they believed they could get away with it.

On the other hand, false claims of a gender pay gap, based on bad averages of unlike cases, has also been extremely common lately.

So there is good reason to doubt on both sides..

And anyway, no matter how evil Oracle is, the burden of proof remains on the accuser.

Re: Devil's adocate

[HornWumpus]

High school would be a big step up for our deranged AC, Hillary loving mascot(s).

First day of middle school. Moron determined to not have his head flushed weekly this year, so aggression, no understanding.

It's good to be 'rich', no debate there.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Simmer down. It's called "devil's advocate" for a reason.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

People are skeptical about wage gap stories because it has been illegal to pay women less since 1963. Most people bitching about the "wage gap" are simply misinterpreting statistics.

Re:Devil's adocate

[zugmeister]

So if Oracle fucks everyone then it follows that Oracle is fucking the males too.

Well sure! Here's the interesting point... when was the last time you read an article about how men were being "fucked" by a company? Do you think this is because it doesn't happen or it's so common it's not worth commenting about?
If it's not a special category (minority religion / gender / ableness?) it doesn't even hit the radar.

Re:Devil's adocate

[jpaine619]

Careful, when you use logic you'll get the SJWs all riled up...

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Oracle fucks everyone then it follows that Oracle is fucking the males too.

Well, yes, because this is Oracle we're talking about. However, the point of this post is that being female is apparently a reason to do a bit of extra fucking.

Re:Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

People are skeptical about wage gap stories because it has been illegal to pay women less since 1963.

Oh well it doesn't happen then because nothing illegal does. That's why America has no one in prison.

Re:Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

Well sure! Here's the interesting point... when was the last time you read an article about how men were being "fucked" by a company?

You mean like offshoring, long hours, the massive abuse that goes on in the games industry? Regularly as it happens. Why?

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Social justice warriors and feminazis are way more evil than Oracle's executives. Of course, you're serviscope_minor, a notorious SJW cancer lover on this website, so this reality is probably impossible to fathom for you. What a shock, a SJW can't understand their own blindly believed ideology, much less why other people might disagree with it. News at 11.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Antique Geekmeister]

There was such an article, written by James Damore at Google. There are other articles: the moderate ones written with attention to testable or well documented fact don't gather near the attention of an outrage filled complaint.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Ol Olsoc]

This is Oracle. They're dicks. About everything. Fuck them they're most likely guilty of this.

Statistically, they could have better profit if they fucked over the males, and paid the women more to avoid an expensive lawsuit. Probably a Ferengi Law of acquisition number there somewhere.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Ol Olsoc]

Oracle has a true, visceral hatred of their customers (even worse than Sony) not to mention the poor bastards who then actually have to use their stinking, shitty products.

I remember when they brought in Oracle to work their magic where I was last. What was supposed to take three months ended up taking three years, with the clock running the whole time. Then if you want to leave, sorry, you have been assimilated, and resistance is futile.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

“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.

How can that happen? Here's what I think probably happened.
It's because the young guy changes jobs and gets a bump every time, and his Oracle hiring salary was based on what he made at the other company. Marilyn Clark has stayed at Oracle for years so the only bump she got was cost of living and seniority raises.

If you want a real comparison, compare her salary to men with similar jobs who had stayed at Oracle for a similar amount of time.

Re:Devil's adocate

[zugmeister]

You mean like offshoring, long hours, the massive abuse that goes on in the games industry?

In the interest of factual honesty, in this case you should probably differentiate between all the personnel in an industry, and what I explicitly said (and you replied to): "about how men were being fucked...".
It's an important distinction.
Or did you mean to make the point there are no women working in the games industry?

Re:Devil's adocate

[GuB-42]

Oracle is not inherently evil, it is just a company that loves money more than its public image.
And for a company that loves money so much, overpaying men just because they are men seems weird.

Yes, I say overpay men, not underpay women. Because if women do the same job for less, then one should expect a greedy company like Oracle to hire more women and fire these unprofitable men or cut their pay.

Re: Devil's adocate

[TimMD909]

"This is Oracle. They're dicks." - did you just assume their gender? That's not woke, bruh.

Re: Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because murder is proved using statistical correlations that say for example men murder more than women.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberal logic. Eating babies is also illegal. Do we have a cannibal epidemic because a few nutjobs are in prison?

The wage gap is a myth. If it was so easy to pay women less, companies would hire only women and save a bunch of money.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but you see, the core argument here is that IF Oracle could get away with paying women less for the same job, then they'd ONLY hire women for those jobs. If there's pay discrimination against women, you have to explain why greedy companies would hire men at all, since men are more costly to hire. A truly ruthless and evil company would exploit pay differentials to only hire the cheapest workers for every job.

If black people or women with the appropriate equivalent qualifications would work for less, then you wouldn't even consider white men for those roles at all, let alone pay them more. It comes down to bottom line: white men would be the first to be sacked to save money. That's why systematic pay differentials for the "same" job don't actually make any economic sense. No greedy company would pay one worker more if they have no reason to, they'd just sack the dude who expects more and keep the cheaper workers.

Re:Devil's adocate

[AmiMoJo]

Why would they pay men extra, if they could hire women at a lower rate to do the same work?

Because the supply of women is much lower.

And also because they may not consciously have been thinking "let's hire this woman, we can pay her less", or just hired her at the same rate but then given lower raises and fewer promotions etc.

Re: Devil's adocate

[AmiMoJo]

"They're" = they are
"Their" = thing belonging to them

As in they are dicks, not the dicks that they have.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

It is quite common to have a preference to hire a given woman even when a given man is more qualified, so that "the board" or something has a more equal amount of men/women.
That is based on the assumption that the disbalance is because of discrimination, that women are not hired because they are women.
So they try to balance it out with discrimination the other way.

Reality is that men/women on average are born different, have different upbringings, resulting in different qualities/strengths/wishes, and because of that land on different job positions.
It could be that for a certain job position, men on average are selected because of their qualities, not because they are men.
In that case, giving preference to hiring women, discriminates against men because they are men.

In my country (NL), there is a lot of talk about correcting the presumed discrimination against women in fields like management/leadership etc.
But there is no talk at all about correcting for the same in fields like sewer maintenance, garbage collection, heavy construction work etc.
And, you don't hear anything at all about correcting "discrimination" against men in fields like healthcare and education, which are dominated by women.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. You could compare just ANYTHING and get around ~5% difference i think. I'd like to see an intentional silly comparision like comparing people with black, blonde, brown or no hair and i guess one would see around ~5% in difference.
Imagine religious people getting the idea of comparing their salary against that of other religious groups and coming to the same conclusion.
The only winners in this madness will be the lawyers.

However, discrimination *could* explain some of the difference in bonuses. This will be difficult to proof though.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

Spare us the white knighting. We're tired of it and it was old last year. I'd love nothing more than for Oracle to be closed down and sold off to the lowest bidder, but I want it to be for a thing they actually did. The one thing more important than destroying malicious actors is delivering the message that our society won't tolerate certain behaviors anymore. Just like locking up a criminal on made up charges because you can't catch him on anything real, doing things to Oracle about BS things like this is just wrong and will provide them with a persecution excuse when they do something that they can really be gone after for.

Re: Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

They're dicks." - did you just assume their gender?

Your missing the distinction between "their" and "they're".

Re: Devil's adocate

[cyber-vandal]

You and others like you have managed a truly impressive feat. You've managed to make yourselves even less popular than Oracle. That takes some doing and you should be rightly proud.

Re: Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

Out of interest did you like the new gilette ad?

Re: Devil's adocate

[cyber-vandal]

It was a bit heavy-handed but there's nothing wrong with the message

Re: Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

I'm curious, what exactly do you mean by me and others like me?

Re: Devil's adocate

[cyber-vandal]

The fanaticism, the demonisation of men, particularly white men, the unwillingness to accept that life is more complicated than Tumblr talking points. If you had no power than that would be fine but you're like political officers in the Soviet armed forces - no one likes you or wants you around but has to be careful around you in case you take offence and decide to upend their lives.

Re:Devil's adocate

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm skeptical because the large number of times "wage gap" claims have used intentionally misleading statistics. For example, the "women earn 77 cents on the dollar of what men earn" was made literally by taking the average wage of all men and comparing it to the average wage of all women and did not take in to account different fields, different experience, different education, etc. When corrected for that sort of thing, it came out closer to 93 cents on the dollar, which is still a problem, but not quite as alarmist.

It's that sort of malarchy that makes me skeptical when a wage gap discussion comes up.

Re:Devil's adocate

[strikethree]

Of the two evils, Oracle is probably, for once, the innocent party here.

Jesus Fucking H Christ. Is the Apocalypse here already? *sigh*

Re: Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

The fanaticism, the demonisation of men, particularly white men,

Oooh I see: you're just making shit up!

Prove it and quote any time I ever demonised men, particularly white men.

Re: Devil's adocate

[serviscope_minor]

I love how a demand for evidence when someone posts lies is met with downmods, but the original lies aren't.

Pathetic.

From now on, I will only hire women

[Anonymous Coward]

Saves my business a lot of money when our employees will take a huge pay cut.

So, basically women less good at negotiating pay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what happened - they got less pay. Not really surprising.

Now all bent out of shape about it, they can do some sjw and unjustly claw some of that back.

Instead of simply fucking off to another job that pays more, or being better at negotiating their salary. Guess what men do? don' like the salary? Tell someone or GTFO

And nobody can force them to keep their underpaying job, so why didn't they simply find a better one?

Does not logically follow

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it logically follows. You are describing the edge cases of the rare women who are interested in technology and are successful in the field. The studies describe the group as a whole.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP confused his point. Yes studies have shown that, on average, females tend to be less interested in technology / "things" and more interested in relationships and people which goes a long way towards explaining why fewer women enter STEM fields.

OTHER similar studies have shown that women tend, on average, to place a greater priority on work/home-life balance, take more time off, work fewer hours etc. More men are willing to focus their lives entirely on career ambitions. This goes a long way towards explaining why men, on average, tend to earn more within their respective fields.

Here is one source that I found with a quick Google: https://fairygodboss.com/research/careers-and-home-life

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Diversity hires means higher probability of hiring a woman regardless of her technical aptitude and ability. Therefore, as more women are hired their salaries will vary based on their performance unless you work in government.

Re: Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh baby give me some diversity hires before they disappear! I love them more than the people who keep the lights on

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

It follows from both our understanding of human (and other animals) that, on a normal distribution, a higher peak in the middle means the percentage of the distribution of each skill set at the tail will be less. So, yes, it not only logically follows, it mathematically follows, if we assume that aptitude for technical matters are on a bell curve and that aptitude is correlated strongly with interest.

Re:Does not logically follow

[AmiMoJo]

It's not even rarer. In some countries women outnumber men in STEM at both education and employment level.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

you're retarded

Re: Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Show us those places then ami.

Re: Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

If the number of [female, minority, LGBT] employees doesn't reflect society at large then the company must be discriminating and must be punished.

Hiring people to meet a quota has predictable results.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

A women is significantly more likely (20-40% more) than a man to be hired for a tech job. This disparity in the aggregate results in people being hired with less of a personal investment in a specific line of work naturally rendering them less productive.

It's not about personal skill or ability at all. The problem is actually rooted in the predisposition to hire women over men.

Re:Does not logically follow

[jpaine619]

In education I'd tend to believe you as women, at least in the US, make up the larger proportion of teachers. At the employment level I call Bullshit. Show us your numbers. Your claim flies in the face of every study I've ever seen.

Sweden is frequently cited as one of the most gender neutral countries in the world, yet they still show the typical (western) divisions in labor. Men are the ones doing the manual labor and engineering fields, while women continually pick the more domestic and people oriented jobs.

This absolute denial, by the left, that men and women are different is lunacy. We know we're different.. Yet these rabid SJWs will froth at the mouth if you voice that.

Over the years I've had a handful of job interviews for pretty high paying jobs that involved lots of work outdoors, long hours, and working at height. During those applications, I've never seen a single woman show up EVER. These were jobs that paid in excess of $100K/year. (Roughly double the median income for California and in this area a very good salary. One can be more than comfortable on that pay). But, they don't want to work outdoors, they don't want to work mandatory overtime, and they don't want to work at height. (In this context "they" means the majority. I'm not implying 100%)

At some point the left is going to have to come to the same conclusion that anyone with brains has come to, if women did equal work to men for less pay, why the fuck wouldn't companies hire only women?

This is an aside, but relevant to the differences in biology and mental character: Back when the telephone was still a new thing, brand new really, AT&T (Bell System) hired males as switchboard operators (yes, because of sexist reasons - the feeling at the time was that women should be at home), but that policy was rapidly scrapped once it became clear that men sucked at that job. Men are abrasive, argumentative, combative, and lack the same level of interpersonal skills that most women have naturally. It wan't unusual for male operators to be fired for telling a customer to "go fuck yourself". The female operators didn't do shit like that. Generally (not 100%, but a large percentage) were friendly, polite, and empathetic. They tended to have the personality to soothe customers rather than battle them.

Gender differences are real.. Deal with it. You aren't going to erase millions of years of evolution just because you want to.

The average male is stronger than 85% of women. The strongest 15-20% of males are stronger than 100% of women.. That's a difference.. It's biological.. It's real... It's how it is.. That alone will excluded most women from most physical jobs where any type of heavy lifting is involved. How the hell do you legislate that away?

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you not campaigning in those countries for men's rights and equal treatment?

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on whether or not they've had a gender based hiring quota in place for a while. Then they could very well have a decent number of female employees that are below average in productivity.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

A woman who wants to do technology work tends to be as good as a male. That's the important part. The lady engineers and scientists I worked with were a joy to work with for the most part. Strange that I became friends with so many, but I did feel sorry for them as they took a lot of abuse from other women, and I was willing to listen. There are also subdivisions regarding productivity, dedication which might have some interesting issues.

Regardless, I would love to see the entire study. We probably won't see it though.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Ol Olsoc]

At some point the left is going to have to come to the same conclusion that anyone with brains has come to,

Most everything you wrote makes sense. But!:

You conflate the entire not right wing world as somehow being Social Justice Warriors. This is not true, any more than saying all Republicans are active Klan members and White Supremacists. The no difference infinite gender crowd are just kooks, like the White supremacists are kooks.

Y'all oughta stop that. There are a whole lot of us who aren't what you might call in your camp who agree that in general, there are differences between men and women in both physique, and mental outlook. Not all, but enough to make trying to shoehorn this generality into no difference at all to maybe be more useful to you than your making them your enemy.

Re:Does not logically follow

[AmiMoJo]

Women in some middle eastern countries outnumber men in STEM jobs as well as education. They have been making great efforts to get more women into the workforce as a way to grow their economies, and you could call this a side effect.

This absolute denial, by the left, that men and women are different is lunacy.

It's also a claim I've only ever heard coming from the right. The claim that anyone thinks that, I mean.

I'd be interested to know of any person who actually believes this and makes sustained arguments to that effect. Before you accuse me of thinking it, I don't.

Men are abrasive, argumentative, combative, and lack the same level of interpersonal skills that most women have naturally.

Apart from that being a rather sexist thing to say about men, the idea that it could have much influence on switchboard operation is laughable. These days many men work in call centres, and given that a switchboard operator isn't even selling anything or doing more than asking for some basic information and connecting the user to a number they looked up it's hard to imagine how even someone who is "abrasive, argumentative, combative" and lacking in interpersonal skills could screw it up.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be a shame if facts disagreed with your feelings.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

jpaine619's story about the original telephone operators is well-known history, except it wasn't men; it was teenage boys.
https://www.history.com/news/telephone-operators-used-to-be-rude-teenage-boys-then-alexander-graham-bell-heard-this-womans-voice

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

"A woman who wants to do technology work tends to be as good as a male."

In fantasy land maybe. A best they'll perform as well as your worst male.

Re:Does not logically follow

[jpaine619]

Apart from that being a rather sexist thing to say about men, the idea that it could have much influence on switchboard operation is laughable.

It's not sexist.. Goddamn.. That's my whole point... It's reality.. Men (as a whole) are absolutely more combative and abrasive than women. AS A WHOLE. Look at prison populations.. Look at bar fight stats.. Look at anything involving violence.. it's almost always men.. I am not implying there are no women beating people up.. But the ratio is probably north of 10 to 1 in favor of men.

And, as another person pointed out, the switchboard story is history.. perhaps not well known in general circles, but certainly among the older telecom people.. The issue is your lack of imagination. You assume the only thing a switchboard operator did was connect people to other people. But no.. They dealt with people.. It's unbelievable what some people expect out of other people.. Regardless, the young men were fired and replaced with women. This was not a fiscal decision. It was a public relations decision. People didn't hire women back then unless they had to.. Back then people were sexist.. If you had a job that could be done by a man, you damn well better hire a man to do it.. You had to really justify hiring women..

Facts are not sexism.

Re:Does not logically follow

[jpaine619]

You are right. I should have specified "young men". But I failed to do so. You are correct.

Re:Does not logically follow

[jpaine619]

You conflate the entire not right wing world as somehow being Social Justice Warriors. This is not true, any more than saying all Republicans are active Klan members and White Supremacists. The no difference infinite gender crowd are just kooks, like the White supremacists are kooks.

Y'all oughta stop that. There are a whole lot of us who aren't what you might call in your camp who agree that in general, there are differences between men and women in both physique, and mental outlook. Not all, but enough to make trying to shoehorn this generality into no difference at all to maybe be more useful to you than your making them your enemy.

I apologize. I got a bit worked up there.. What I should have said was "radical liberals". Your statement is absolutely correct.

Re: Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

>rabid SJW warriors will froth at the mouth

Citation needed.

Actually, citation needed generally. When your prose gives the impression it's you who is rabid, you really need to back it up.

Or do you expect your readers to believe everything you type, even unto the frothiness?

Re:Does not logically follow

[AmiMoJo]

It's not sexist.. Goddamn.. That's my whole point... It's reality..

It's not though. The biological differences are relatively small and, like many of our other biological urges, are not difficult to overcome. Most of the aggression is part of a toxic definition of masculinity.

Regardless, the young men were fired and replaced with women.

Something similar happened on the radio in the UK. For decades people complained that women's voices were harder to understand or that they didn't speak with enough authority when delivering the news and other serious programming. These days it's not considered an issue at all, and in fact most automated systems like sat navs default to a female voice.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Roger W Moore]

For that to be true you would need to show that the width of the distributions are different and that the selection criteria select based on where you are on the curve. The OP did not claim that there was a difference in width or indeed anything at all about the distribution other than the fact that the mean was lower BEFORE the selection criteria of "working at Oracle" was applied. If you want to add additional information such as the width of the distribution of technological aility/interest then yes, that additional information might support your point. However, can we measure this accurately enough that we can actually trust that width?

Re:Does not logically follow

[LordAba]

Women in some middle eastern countries outnumber men in STEM jobs as well as education. They have been making great efforts to get more women into the workforce as a way to grow their economies, and you could call this a side effect.

Yes, but would those same women choose STEM if it wasn't such an economic advantage for themselves? I have no interest in nursing, but if nursing jobs tripled in salary while other tech fields crashed I would follow the money

In most Western countries you can still have a higher standard of living with a job and degree that pays less, so personal choice has more of an impact. Given the different chemicals in the bodies of men and women this could lead to different outcomes.

Unless you have any studies to the contrary?

Re:Does not logically follow

[Ol Olsoc]

You conflate the entire not right wing world as somehow being Social Justice Warriors. This is not true, any more than saying all Republicans are active Klan members and White Supremacists. The no difference infinite gender crowd are just kooks, like the White supremacists are kooks.

Y'all oughta stop that. There are a whole lot of us who aren't what you might call in your camp who agree that in general, there are differences between men and women in both physique, and mental outlook. Not all, but enough to make trying to shoehorn this generality into no difference at all to maybe be more useful to you than your making them your enemy.

I apologize. I got a bit worked up there.. What I should have said was "radical liberals". Your statement is absolutely correct.

No problem. We're on the same page in fact. My motto is "So many kooks, so few meteor strikes."

Re: Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Show us those places then ami.

Well, there is the USA.
http://fortune.com/2017/12/21/...
https://news.aamc.org/press-re...

Re:Does not logically follow

[jpaine619]

It's not though. The biological differences are relatively small and, like many of our other biological urges, are not difficult to overcome. Most of the aggression is part of a toxic definition of masculinity.

Bull. Aggression is built into us. Males compete for territory / mates / status / dominance. We've decided, as a species, that we're not okay with physical acts of violence (most of the time) so that aggression has to be redirected. That doesn't mean it's gone. It's still there, but is simply redirected to more productive tasks or, at least, less destructive ones.

The biological differences are not small.. Maybe when you compare a male and a female to a chimp or something.. Yeah, then the differences between the two people seem minor.. But when you're comparing a human female to a human male the differences are not small. The change required to get the difference may be minor but the end results are enormous.

Your average male is about 250% stronger than a female, somewhere around 6" taller, and possesses nearly double the mass. That sound minor to you?

We have the evidence now to prove that men/women simply are interested in different things. Give them maximum freedom to choose what they want to do, remove legal barriers to doing it, strip away as much of the fiscal pressure and, lo-and-behold, they will maximally self-segregate by sex.

Sweden has the most sexually segregated work force in the western world. PERIOD. Full stop. That's the facts. It's self-segregated.. Guess what? Women (as a whole) don't want to be brick layers.. They don't want to want to be tower climbers, they don't want to be a CEO. I'm sorry if this upsets you because you thought it would turn out different but facts don't care about feelings..

Put down your SJW playbook. It's like talking to a meme. Men and women (compared to each other) are WAY different. We evolved with different roles and after 100,000+ years of evolution, those differences are permanent. Women gathered, men killed. That's the way it was and that's the way we're still wired. We're working on the killing part, but it gets used an awful lot.. Men are expected to defend the woman. That's not societal, it's logical. You don't send in the 100lb 5'2" female to do battle. You send in the 6' 220lb male to do the killing. Biologically, women are far more valuable to "the tribe" than a man is.. 1 man can impregnate an awful lot of women in a year.. 1 woman can only be impregnated 1x per year (approximately). Although a large portion of that value is offset by the fact that one needs a large supply of men to keep the barbarians at bay. i.e if you need to boost your population or replace a lot of killed off members you better have a healthy supply of women.

Your assertion that the biological differences are minor is a load of horseshit. We're not equal physically. We're not equal mentally. This does not imply women are stupid or that men are smart.. What it means is that we process information differently and we come to conclusions via different methods.

Continuing to espouse the idea that our differences are societal or minor makes you look like someone who has no grip on reality.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on what you mean by "technology work". A major issue I see in many areas is a lack of technological confidence to be able to point out when nearly everyone else is doing it wrong. Women are more agreeable, which is the opposite of what you need if you want to make a large scale positive difference. My brother got his first job out college in "technology", noticed issues that no one else noticed but no one would listen and actively blocked him. He spent extra time after work making his own tools to automate much of his work, and when he got recognized by his manager for being substantially faster than everyone else, he shared his tools and vision for improvements. Within a few months he doubled the efficiency of common work in his department, while causing quality to improve. It was a hard up-hill battle to fight the norm.

In technology, the norm is pure crap. Disorganization, inconsistency, wrong tools, unnecessary complexity, missed opportunities. The cherry on top is few people can understand an idea without seeing it in action. If you even want to consider that "understanding". It's hard to convince people to change a process, especially if it's a systemic change. In order to pull this off, you need confidence in something you've never done before, you need to be assertive, and you have to be extremely determined.

My opinion isn't based on a single anecdote, but many from hyper-performing family and friends along with many personal. To make a real difference, you need to fight the norm. And you can't just blindly fight it. You need to have backing talent, confidence, and people skills. Then you have the issue that your personal performance is about the same or possibly even worse than everyone else's, but your contribution is greatly more than everyone else because you just made everyone more productive. Difficult to objectively measure, but can be subjectively understood and recognized.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Ol Olsoc]

A major issue I see in many areas is a lack of technological confidence to be able to point out when nearly everyone else is doing it wrong. Women are more agreeable, which is the opposite of what you need if you want to make a large scale positive difference.

That's in interesting statement. Some years ago, I was talking with a co-worker. The subject of gender differences came up, and I asked her what she considered the main difference between men and women in the workplace was.

"While its very important to me that you like me, You don't give a fuck if I like you or not."

I was shocked "But I do like you - a lot!"

"That's not the point - I know you like me, but I also know if I didn't like you, you wouldn't think anything of that."

So yeah, that agreeable business permeates so much. She further told me that just telling me that took a lot of what she considered bravery.

My opinion isn't based on a single anecdote, but many from hyper-performing family and friends along with many personal. To make a real difference, you need to fight the norm. And you can't just blindly fight it. You need to have backing talent, confidence, and people skills. Then you have the issue that your personal performance is about the same or possibly even worse than everyone else's, but your contribution is greatly more than everyone else because you just made everyone more productive. Difficult to objectively measure, but can be subjectively understood and recognized.

Can't say I disagree with any of this. Another part of all of this is that the business of being assertive doesn't mean being an asshole. My co-workers and I would argue endlessly, but we weren't pissed off. We were working problems. You can't work problems if you can't push for the solutions. So if everyone is on the same page, most of them are of no use.

Re:Does not logically follow

[Bengie]

The opposite is equally bad. Women are less likely to stand up for themselves and tend to favor conformity over being correct. They're easier to convince that they're wrong even when they're not. And this is a big issue in STEM fields. People don't like to think and treat rules of thumb as absolute facts. About 10% of STEM workers produce about 50% of the value, and they tend to get paid along those lines. When you're 10x more value than your co-workers, you have to stand up for yourself unless you want to be dragged down to their level.

And it's a fractal all the way up. The top 10% of the top 10% represent 25% of value.

Case not as strong as you might think

[MikeRT]

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.

Re:Case not as strong as you might think

[currently_awake]

Was the quarterly bonus higher than the unpaid overtime? If it was the company is doing it wrong. If it's not then the workers are behaving illogically.

Re:Case not as strong as you might think

[alvinrod]

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.

Re: Case not as strong as you might think

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I wrong in my belief that if you are paid a salary that it is assumed that you will work AT LEAST a 40 hour work week? If getting the job done requires more than 40 hours on a regular basis then I'd have to require more pay, period. Am I wrong here? It isn't like I've been able to dip out and take a 30 hour week and still expect to get paid the same. Full time job = 40 hours. Salary should reflect 40 hours worth of work. Not 45 hours... Not 50 hours. I don't know about you all but I don't work for free. If you need me to work 60-hour weeks then you're going to have to pay for it above and beyond my base salary. Am I wrong and just have an entitled Millennial mindsets?

Re:Case not as strong as you might think

[HornWumpus]

Extra facetime. Never forget burnout. Expect hours over 50 to have negative productivity in all but the very short term. For 'brain work', 'bullshit and stoop work' is different.

Producing more working code is not going to translate into more pay, because the idiot's metrics are _broken_. They got the middle manager position by kissing ass and putting in facetime. That's exactly what they will manage for.

There is an iron law of management: 'You get what you incentivise.' Not what you ask for, leading by example, mission statement or any other bullshit.

Re: Case not as strong as you might think

[HornWumpus]

You're basically wrong. You negotiate a salary knowing what's expected, at least after the first year you do, even if your a kid.

Nobody does 40 hours of 'actual work', and you can exercise some control. Skip the useless meeting and get some work done in peace or zone out while the 3 letter dweeb pontificates (careful: don't snore). Pretty much everybody has had weeks where zero fucks are given and zero productive work gets done, don't kid yourself. Usually means your already looking hard, if you aren't you should be.

Smart places keep the standard week under 50, but that's so the employees will have 'something in the tank' for emergency weeks. Idiots staff so that every week is an emergency. You'll learn to spot it in the faces and attitudes of prospective coworkers during interviews. Most people are shitty liars, managers ask employees to lie to interviewees all the time, but their hearts aren't generally in it. Look for tells.

Ask: 'How many open issues in the bug tracking system for live code, right now?' They'll duck: 'At what severity?' You counter: 'How is severity done here? How many 'workarounds' are live?'

Re:Case not as strong as you might think

[MikeRT]

As I understood it, the bonus was not nearly as high as the unpaid overtime. Like maybe 25%-33% of the value of your hourly rate if they paid you for the overtime.

Re:Case not as strong as you might think

[Anonymous Coward]

> one of those people who believe that a workaholic culture is "institutionally sexist,"

It's toxic and exploitative, and the people who can perform well in it are those with few or no family obligations that conflict with this workoholism. Which, considering how women do significantly more of the child rearing and home making work in present-day society, means men more than woman.

So yeah, there is an "institutionally sexist" aspect to it. And I believe most women and many (most?) men would agree.

Re:Case not as strong as you might think

[zugmeister]

Looked at from that perspective, I find I have to agree with you!
I suspect the important issue though is what should be done about it?
Do we try to change the culture or do we simply fix the problem by mandating that women are artificially advantaged to reach parity regardless of qualifications?

Re: Case not as strong as you might think

[jpaine619]

I believe it's a state-by-state case, but in general you are correct. There are exempted industries and such, but the rule of thumb in the state of California is that ALL overtime is paid.. Salary/Hourly does NOT matter. If you're not a manager (spend 50.01% of your time managing other employees) then all hours worked, in excess of 40, MUST be paid at a rate of 1-1/2 times your equivalent hourly rate. All hours worked in excess of 12 hours in a single day MUST be paid at 2x your normal hourly (or equivalent) rate.

The law gets a little vague when it comes to manager overtime pay as the law uses the phrase "reasonable" when describing what amount of overtime, for a manager, may not be paid at overtime rates.. As far as I know this vague wording is still at the heart of a class-action lawsuit between AT&T and its managers in Southern California (some of whom were working up to 6 hours of overtime per day and not being paid for it).

As I said, there are exempted industries and union contracts are also exempted. But in most cases the above text is true.

Re: Case not as strong as you might think

[Anonymous Coward]

Good points. At my previous job I was moved from salary to hourly (most salaried workers were other than upper management). Everyone was expected to put in at least 40 hours, period. Once I was on hourly I was "pre-approved" to work 2.5 hours of OT each week before having to go to a manager for approval to work more. Often I'd come in above 40 but below 42.5 so for me it wasn't a big deal. Even once I hit my 40 and started earning OT I'd often still leave unless there was something pressing that had to be done...I simply value my free-time more than what I'd be paid for sticking around to do something on Friday afternoon that I could knockout Monday morning...or Tuesday. Depending on my workload I often had weeks where I'd be able to get everything on my todo list done by Wednesday but I still had to show up Thursday and Friday to get my 40.

Snoring....I may have a few times but the co-workers in my "office" were on the same level and we all had each others backs. When 4 people are in something like a 15" x 10" office....yeah...we looked after our own :)

Many meetings I considered to be a waste of time unless I was speaking directly with a client. After a certain point in my time there I would just decline meetings that served no purpose to my job. They may have wanted me in them but I had actual WORK to do so I'd decline them and that seemed to work well most of the time. The weekly department meetings on Fridays or whatever where I'd have to sit and listen to what others had done during the week that 80% of the time had nothing to do with what I was working on.....jezzzus please kill me. I became a decent doodler. OOHHHH...and managers who say cell phones shouldn't be out during meetings but then COMPLETELY IGNORE their own rules and are glued to their screens all the time.....gerrrr. I'm not a big phone whore so the "rule" didn't really impact me but FFS...the double standards.

Re: Case not as strong as you might think

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the law I'm a little surprised that there are employees that aren't managers in California at this point.

So why didn't they switch jobs?

[PastTense]

If they were underpaid why didn't they switch jobs?

Or is the argument that 100% of companies, even those with females in the relevant decision-making roles, discriminate against females?

Re:So why didn't they switch jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since wages are a closely guarded secret in the US, that one is not so surprising.

It's more surprising that they should have ended up here.

My guess is they took shortcuts with their gender quotas.

If you have ten times as many male applicants as female, but you want 50% of each gender hires, you have a choice.

One is to throw out, randomly, 9 of 10 male resumes. This ensures, assuming women and men applicants are equally qualified (which we will), that men and women hires will be equally qualified too, by whatever metric they use in their hiring process. On average, of course. This has been established as a legal way to do gender quotas in the US, and AFAIK it's what Google does.

The other is to accept that the average female hire will score worse on whatever metric you use for hiring, but hire them anyway. It can be deliberate, or accidental - for instance, if you cheat by peeking on those 9 in 10 resumes to make sure you don't throw out the very "best" ones, it will be the end result. Even though men and women are equally good, the "best" will likely be a man, since there are just more blue balls in the urn.

If you do this, it probably is illegal gender discrimination, weirdly enough. But against men, so they probably won't get in trouble... unless they evaluate their employees by anything like the formula they use to evaluate resumes (and forget to add a bonus for being female). Then they quickly get into trouble anyway.

To throw out 9 out of ten 10 CVs from men might seem like it would cripple a company, but it doesn't. a) because applicants to these sorts of businesses are likely to be extremely qualified anyway, and b) their hiring metrics aren't actually that great at ranking them in the first place.

Re:So why didn't they switch jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm familiar with a local government that has this problem. The County Commissioner is a female that was elected on the promise of making all local civil service employees equally 50/50 men and women. She did. Here's the thing: a huge percentage of local employees are skilled laborers with very physical jobs, like road crews, water/sewer plant operators, etc, that are all male. The result of mandating an even 50/50 split is that the entire administration departments are 100% female. Every desk job now goes to a female. Males need not even apply. Finance, accounting, billing, clerical, everything. There is zero opportunity now for the men in those labor positions to advance to desk-job management and the women that are being hired for those positions have zero experience with the hands-on aspects. This began about 6 years ago and the results have been disastrous for the public these departments are supposed to serve.

As far as "correlation != causation"? Ok... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

So if I stick my hand in a fire for 1 minute & it's burned every time I do, "correlation is not causation"? That 'trite saying' (fag meme) = bs 99% of the time & tries to defy common-sense.

Good luck that.

* This isn't directed @ YOU specifically - it's directed at that HOMO illogic-logic bullshit "meme" (I personally hate that f'ing made up fag word).

APK

P.S.=> As far as women taking less pay? That's on them to negotiate better pay IF you must work for others & if they take less the employer will be GLAD it's so - they pay what the market demand bears & they'll mostly always go for least payroll payout (easiest single cost for any businessman to control). In my position as a business owner here, I do rentals. IF I can get away w/ charging someone more per rental, I do. IF I can't, I have to take what the clientele is willing to pay - it's THAT simple... apk

Re:As far as "correlation != causation"? Ok... apk

[Vanyle]

Sticking your hand in a fire isn't correlation, it is direct observable cause

Re:As far as "correlation != causation"? Ok... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not our fault if you don't understand basic logic. It usually applied to things that might be considered a little more abstract than... sticking your hand directly into an open flame.

How about this...
You would find a correlation that the taller a person gets the more intelligent they get... You can clearly see that if you look at test scores. A 6ft tall male is probably a heck of a lot smarter than say... a 2ft tall male. So height and intelligence are correlated. In this case though we can see that cause of that difference is probably something else... Age and height also correlate... you get taller as you age... you also tend to get smarter as you age. As long as you don't vote for Trump, them you have to start over from scratch again.

In other news

[guruevi]

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%.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Cherry picking statistics can show anything.

Re:In other news

[tomhath]

Cherry picking statistics can show anything.

Cherry picked statistics are the basis of the lawsuit.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

But in this case they picked cherries because the story is about cherries (Female workers for Oracle), not because the statistics look best.

Re:In other news

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

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%

So, what your saying is that we have good grounds for some lawsuits of our own.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Men and boys are systematically disadvantaged by a system that is stacked against them - a system that routinely runs them down, discriminates against them and tries to treat them as broken. That they succeed despite this is a testament to their resilience.

No-one wants to admit it despite the evidence.

They are misandry deniers.

Example:

Run a "blind hiring" test. End up hiring more white men - as always happens.
Realise this confirms sexism in hiring, just not the sort you were expecting

Do you:

a) Admit it. Do more studies. Reverse polities on quota hiring women/minorities.

b) End the trail, bury evidence, deny it every happened.

If a) congratulations. You're a normal, rational person.

If b) you're an ideologue who can't deal with evidence. Your ideology can't be wrong. So the evidence must be wrong, or it was tampered with my 'white supremacy/patriarchy'.

Re:In other news

[alvinrod]

The issue is that the demographics make different choices that impact pay, and it's not just a simple matter of trying to encourage them or use other socialization tactics to make it all go away. To a certain degree men and women are just wired differently, and this is physically observable by looking at the physical brain. Even ignoring any differences that might cause, the male body can handle greater physical stress and so there are always going to be a category of jobs that men are going to dominate as a demographic. Some of those jobs will pay better than other jobs. Some will pay worse. You're not going to be able to achieve some ultimate equality where a brick layer and a neurosurgeon make the same pay.

Statistics already show that wages are already almost entirely unrelated to demographics, so we've reached the goal that you want. If there are some people who want to work themselves harder than everyone else, I'm not going to try to stand in their way. If more of those people tend to be men than women, I'm not going to care. The people who are trying to adjust all of these outcomes to fit their notions of how the world should be are playing with something that they don't understand well at all and they can't even begin to imagine the unintended consequences.

Re: In other news

[GhostBond]

Great, where can I sign up to look pretty and live off my girlfriends large salary while I have a part time job at starbucks? I'm not mocking girls who do it, I seriously would definitely go that route if it was an option for me.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:In other news

[timeOday]

"Single women without dependents make 8% more than their male counterparts with same education and experience across the US"

That is interesting. Does "male counterparts" here mean "single males without dependents," or "all males"?

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Single women without dependents make 8% more than their male counterparts

To be completely fair, this can be explained without necessarily attributing it to sexual discrimination. In general, when men and women are looking for partners, women care substantially more about how much their potential partner earns. (See, for example, the seventh plot on this page: the red-and-green heatmap. Men with low incomes get almost no messages in online dating.)

Men with low incomes, therefore, tend to remain single, and do not acquire dependents. So when you compare men and women *without dependents*, you're comparing the less-attractive, low-income men with a closer-to-representative group of women.

Re:In other news

[guruevi]

You go argue with the US Department of Labor then.

Re: In other news

[guruevi]

Depends on your partner, if you have a partner with that kind of ethos, then go ahead; they'll be hard to find, but you're looking for a leader in the field. It's not many, but I know a few people that do this, stay-at-home dad isn't uncommon anymore.

Re:In other news

[guruevi]

Single males without dependents. Generally, unlike CNN, when the government is comparing statistics, they use the same baseline.

Re:In other news

[guruevi]

That is one of the explanations but these men would, over time, make themselves more attractive if that were the single identifier of success (either in career or dating) because single people have more opportunities to drive up their salaries.

Re:In other news

[guruevi]

I agree and I don't think anyone is discouraging men or women to follow their dreams, but every choice does have a real consequence, this is not a penalty. You have to look across more than just one dimension and not just a single dimension across the intersectional group identity though.

Re:In other news

[jpaine619]

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...

Re: In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a semi-stay-at-home dad. Hard, hard work. And, yes, women are discriminated against based on sex. 'It's a Big Club, and they aren't in it'. Lots of men are assholes and as you go up in Corporate ranks it becomes a commonality. Sign of true weakness, one of many they (we) have.

Re:In other news

[AmiMoJo]

No need to be a disingenuous dick about it. Everyone knows that it means equality of opportunity.

Re:In other news

[AmiMoJo]

The "different choices" argument is often made, but it's not really fair to claim that all these things are choices. For example I'm sure many mothers would be happy if their partners took an equal amount of leave and did an equal amount of the parenting chores. And in reality they tend to get penalized anyway, e.g. when men become fathers they tend to get a small overall increase in income (thought to be because they are seen as more mature) where as mothers get a significant decrease (because they are perceived as being divided between family and work) even if they dedicate the same amount of time to parenting.

"Statistics already show that wages are already almost entirely unrelated to demographics"

Really, being born into a poor family has no impact on future earnings?

Re:In other news

[alvinrod]

The "different choices" argument is often made, but it's not really fair to claim that all these things are choices.

Are there laws mandating any of these things? I wasn't aware. They're still very much choices.

It also doesn't matter that many women would like it if their husbands took time off. The point is that if you took a large sample of individuals who were the ones primarily in charge of care of young children, you'd probably find more women than men who would prefer to be doing it. That doesn't mean that there aren't some men who would prefer to do. It's the same as sampling anything else where sex plays a role. You can even do it with height. No one is saying that you can't find a woman who is 200 cm tall, only that you won't find as many people who are 200 cm tall that are also women.

"Statistics already show that wages are already almost entirely unrelated to demographics" Really, being born into a poor family has no impact on future earnings?

I think you could have been more disingenuous with your argument if you'd used quadriplegics or people born mentally disabled.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

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%

Nice stat, but how does that apply to Oracle? If what you say is true, then Oracle is systematically underpaying women.

LOL, the capcha was "negligee".

Re:In other news

[AmiMoJo]

A choice between not having kids and having kids but having to do more of the work or take a hit on your career isn't much of a choice.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, the choice between having your cake and eating it is not much of a choice. Well, boo fucking hoo.

Captcha: culpable. How appropriate.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

It is mindboggling how completely fucking idiotic you are. You are an argument for post-birth abortions.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone's being disingenuous, it's you. I would encourage slashdotters to organize a class-action lawsuit against you for stealing oxygen.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's a choice. One with two options which men also have to make. Or do you think men do not play a role in their children's lives and fathers do not have reduced career opportunities.

Surely you are not so sexist as to paint half the population with one brush.

Re:In other news

[AmiMoJo]

Wow, this post triggered someone. Some people around here are extremely insecure.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

In my country, the crime rate among blacks and arabs is higher than whites.
Suggesting that the cause of that is their race, is generally regarded as unacceptable.
This is the same type of oversimplification.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

For example I'm sure many mothers would be happy if their partners took an equal amount of leave and did an equal amount of the parenting chores.

It's always a trade off, if the mom and dad each spent as much time with the kid...
Then They will also have to spend each as much time away from the kid
(cause someone has to work to keep the family afloat financially)

You can't have it both ways, between the two parents there's X amount of time that needs to be spent on the kids and Y amount of time that needs to be spent on work. If the men get more of X, the women will have to take more of Y.

*Most* (not all) women will vastly prefer their partner being the one to spent the time away from the kid necessary to keep the family afloat, and most men will put up with that division of labor (maybe we shoulnd't, but that's certainly not the general trend at the moment)

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Shifting your work/life balance more to life, automatically implies shifting it away from work. It's a tradeoff.

When 2 people working the same job for the same company are equally smart, knowledgeable and experienced but one of them spends more of 5 more hours a week on the job. Then the one spending 5 more hours will generally earn more at that job over time.

That seems completely fair and logical to me, and it very much is a choice for the vast majority of people.

Having kids will necessarily impact that choice, cause raising kids is a time and money sink.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone knowing that is not a given
lots of self declared feminists, explicitly want equality of outcome not opportunity

Re:In other news

[LordAba]

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%.

Sort of ironically, over the last couple decades women's happiness has been on the decline.

Re:In other news

[LordAba]

There was a study done with university professors and papers published that showed basically the same thing: men and women without family produced the same amount of output (I can't remember if women or men were slightly higher). Women who were married and had children produces a lower amount of papers, while men who were married and had children produced a higher amount.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's true. Otherwise people wouldn't bemoan the lack of women in STEM. They'd look to see are women getting the same chances, and if they were, yet the imbalance persisted, they'd let it go. But that's not what's happening, people are trying to force a balance in the work place.

At some point you have to accept that women just may not want to work in a certain field despite all the opportunity in the world. It's definitely true the other way around. If I wanted to be set for life, I'd go in to nursing. There's a massive shortage of men in nursing, and they're desperately needed simply because a large part of nursing is moving people around, and men are physically bigger and stronger and are better at moving people around. And yet the guaranteed job, the guarantee of higher pay simply to keep you around, and they can't get men in to nursing worth a damn, because men have little interest in it.

Re:In other news

[jpaine619]

Yes.... That's precisely what they want.. Shit, California was/is trying to mandate females on corporate boards.. MANDATE... So, like... What the hell does one do if you can't find a qualified & willing woman? Do you have to put an unqualified or unwilling female on the board? Mandating gender quotas is precisely Equality of Outcome.

Re:In other news

[jpaine619]

I don't think that's true. Otherwise people wouldn't bemoan the lack of women in STEM. They'd look to see are women getting the same chances, and if they were, yet the imbalance persisted, they'd let it go. But that's not what's happening, people are trying to force a balance in the work place.

At some point you have to accept that women just may not want to work in a certain field despite all the opportunity in the world......[snip].

Not sure how to read this.. In the first paragraph you seem to be arguing that women aren't getting the opportunities and in the second you seem to be agreeing that it's possible they are but simply aren't interested in the same jobs..

I'll hold comment until you clarify.. (and I accept the possibility that I'm just having a lack of reading comprehension at the moment). Because, to me, it seems your statement is self-contradictory.

Re: So, basically women less good at negotiating p

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. Nailed it.

I as a man have no such crutch and had to work hard to obtain valuable skills to allow high negotiated salaries.

Oddly enough all the naysayers were women too. I dropped out of school and was told I was an idiot for going the self taught route.

Fast forward and now it is "unfair" I make more because my self taught way was better than the college all the females were trying to force me to attend.

Technology favors intelligent slackers, get over it.

Oracle

[Ecuador]

This is very far from the worse that Oracle has done of course.

In any case, it is certain I'll see those "women are bad at negotiating salaries" comments, from people who have zero understanding of how, well, anything works. If salary negotiation was haggling, women would be fine, they are fine hagglers. But when you apply for a job, the potential employer already has formed his opinion on how much you are worth to them and the job offer will be relative to that. There is some wiggle room, but not enough to cover a $13k discrepancy. And in the end, if the women feel they are worth less, it is also due to the environment, not some innate problem.

And note I don't like the "solution" of preferring someone because they are female or a minority and not because they are better, in an attempt to "balance out" the status quo. It's the "easy way" that causes other problems, not the best way.

Re:Oracle

[Antique Geekmeister]

> If salary negotiation was haggling, women would be fine, they are fine hagglers.

What makes you think this? A casual search for verifiable research is flooded with poor quality claims. This article seems insightful about the differences:

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/whe...

Re:Oracle

[WorBlux]

However if the valuations are significantly wrong, you should be able to make a lot of money by splitting the difference and hiring a bunch of women.

Another explanation is that women in general are valuing non-wage factors differently than men when considering employment offers, job-seeking and maintainance of current employment.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Another explanation is that women in general are valuing non-wage factors differently than men when considering employment offers, job-seeking and maintainance of current employment.

This would explain women choosing companies that offer lower salaries, but make it up with other factors. Not the same company lowballing women,

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on Oracle's business model, 4000 of those 4200 woman must be lawyers. You'd think they would be able to negotiate a salary.

Re:Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish you had written your post like this:

This is very far from the worse that Oracle has done of course.

In any case, it is certain I'll see those "women are bad at negotiating salaries" comments, from people who have zero understanding of how, well, anything works. When you apply for a job, the potential employer already has formed his opinion on how much you are worth to them and the job offer will be relative to that. There is some wiggle room, but not enough to cover a $13k discrepancy.

Re:Oracle

[Magius_AR]

In any case, it is certain I'll see those "women are bad at negotiating salaries" comments, from people who have zero understanding of how, well, anything works. If salary negotiation was haggling, women would be fine, they are fine hagglers. But when you apply for a job, the potential employer already has formed his opinion on how much you are worth to them and the job offer will be relative to that. There is some wiggle room, but not enough to cover a $13k discrepancy.

That's wholly incorrect. I'm a male in the computer science field and have routinely received lowball offers from companies that exceed 20k in "wiggle room." I know this because I've used competing offers to walk them up at least 20k with their offer. Maybe the difference here is that I was ready to walk if they stuck to their shit offer.

Moreover, is there really is a pay gap imposed by outside forces, why do female single business owners (namely, people without a boss) underpay themselves compared to male business owners? What excuse are they going to use there to get out of any kind of personal responsibility for the discrepancy? I'm sure they have some kind of bullshit lined up.

Possible consequence - equal work hours

[sinij]

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.

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[currently_awake]

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.

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[AmiMoJo]

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?

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[Anonymous Coward]

You should give Electronic Arts a call and bestow them with this knowledge. I'm sure that your call will be pivotal to their corporate culture.

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[phantomfive]

Hiring more workers is cheaper than chronic overtime.

Unless they are paid by salary.

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Women expect it. Men that don't are called "financially unstable" in polite company and "incels" in uneducated company.

Re: Possible consequence - equal work hours

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[AmiMoJo]

Some misandrists with mod points today. They must really hate men if they think this is trolling.

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[sinij]

These are residual effects of American Dream. The idea is that you work really hard you will succeed and be prosperous. Well, work really hard is the only part that remained intact.

Re:Possible consequence - equal work hours

[Shotgun]

In way of citation:

Sign up for any dating website and read the women's profiles. A VERY large percentage will have something along the lines of a request for a man "who takes care of himself", "is responsible" or "handles his business". There are many variations on the theme, but they all translate to has a good job and makes good money. The most direct is the claim "There are two things the lady should never touch. The door handle or the bill for dinner."

If you play the game by 'casually' indicating that you have money to burn, you get lots of attention. It is an interesting experiment to run. Create two profiles. Use the same pictures, but change the amount of income you claim. Note the difference in the number of responses.

All the gnashing of teeth about toxic masculinity are idiotic, because most of it is driven by WOMEN!!

This is all just a side show, a distraction

[rsilvergun]

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

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck your pro union bullshit. Don't come here and politick comrade. I will divide and conquer your wedge.

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief. You are one of the worst on Slashdot for promoting class warfare. All we hear about are how your problems are the fault of the "rich", yet you never define what "rich" is, except for maybe having more than you. But somehow you're entitled to redistribute their money to you.

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[DCFusor]

Well, about using identity politics as a divide and conquer technique, I agree (and I rarely do with you). Oldest game in the book, used forever, but more recently put into hyperdrive by the very people you are rooting for here. Damn, the cognitive dissonance is deafening. This has been like someone used the shoe-shop ray (Hitchhiker's) to create discord, and it's more on the Alinsky side, not that anyone is particularly innocent.
This partisanship is all a distraction while the very top run off with the rest of our money and freedom (the controlled opposition even got the numbers way wrong - accident? - , you're in the 1% if you own your own home debt free and have a little in the bank - the problem is more like the .0001% - or less). They're not partisan, they're statist, classist, and elitist. They are all the war party. If you try to end a pointless war now, it's called treason. WTF? No one represents the people, which has been borne out by many studies that now show the US as a complete crony oligarchy.
That's the problem, the rest is just symptoms.

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[alvinrod]

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?

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the mom and pop shop down the street with three cashiers can only afford to hire those workers at $12/hr, which those workers agreed to receive? Too bad. Mom and pop shouldn't have been so greedy. Now one of them gets fired to compensate for the new wage change. Mom and pop overwork themselves because now they have to cover the loss of a key employee, and possibly shut down their store. Meanwhile, Megacorp X down the street hires workers at $15/hr until all of the mom and pop stores are suffocated. Then they roll out the additional self checkout lanes which replace 8 cashiers with one since they would still need someone to unlock a register when a customer accidentally takes a weighted item off of the scale too soon. The extra cashiers are now dead weight and can be laid off safely while the automated registers cost less in the longer term. Truly, this is the future that we want to work towards!
 
Captcha: troubles

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

(article says "Millennials" but I don't know about you but I took a paycut when the economy crashed in 2008).

I didn't...

Now you know about me.

Re: This is all just a side show, a distraction

[GhostBond]

Funny, the rich expect us to redistribute our time, efoort, and health to them.

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Dump all the federal and state mandated leave for women, then let's see if they REALLY do 100% equivalent work when compared/contrated to their male co-workers in the exact same job title and rank. No? See, before the federal and state mandates, all that extra leave (especially the having a baby factor) had to be requested and approved. No approval (leave without pay) was a huge controversy if they didn't have the time off available. That's still not hours worked and tasks either left unfinished or re-delegated to others, but now they are federally or state mandated for the employer to grant that leave. The wages are fair. Equal work includes hours and tasks. All companies, not just technology. Women won't be satisfied with "equal" until they have a matriarch-like majority and power... but then that's not equal.

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[AmiMoJo]

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.

The extremely obvious reason for this is that they started off in a worse position, and as they gained more equality of opportunity their wages rose significantly faster. Of course that doesn't mean they have caught up necessarily either.

Sure enough, if you look at average earnings by demographic, that's what you see.

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote in your primary for pro-Union, pro-worker candidates who refuse corporate PAC money

Would love to, but all of them I've seen so far are also opposed to allowing me to keep my Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights, believe that a person can wish themselves into the opposite sex, and have almost zero tolerance for the First Amendment. Those issues are more important to me than pay, so I'm forced to swallow my pride an vote for candidates that support those issues even though they are diametrically opposed to other issues I support.

Re:This is all just a side show, a distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you framing this as men vs women? This is women vs oracle.

Oh yeah?

[Anonymous Coward]

female employees were paid on average $13,000 less per year than men doing similar work

Notice it doesn't say "for the same number of hours"?

Re: Oh yeah?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or why? If you take a job only then to complain about diversity should we handle you with kid gloves?

Perspective

[Livius]

I despise fake outrage over alleged sexism accusations coming from people who don't understand statistics. I also despise Oracle. So...

I'm very curious about the validity of the claims, which unfortunately the fine article doesn't not elaborate on. It's not even possible for a 33.1% discrepancy in stock value to be a result of bias, unless they actually mean something else. A 13.2% difference in bonuses could be more interesting - it's very easy to see a discrepancy due to, for example, differences in work-life balance choices, but it could also be a result of subjective factors which opens the door to at least the possibility of bias. Further investigation seems on the surface to be a reasonable response.

A 3.8% difference in pay, if it truly is for equal work (not 'similar', equal), is hardly a crisis of systematic discrimination, but it is too high to dismiss as random variation or differences in negotiating styles, and so would definitely constitute an employment standards violation. If true I hope Oracle gets every legal penalty that's coming to them.

I guess 3.8% doesn't make for a glamorous and shocking headline.

Re:Perspective

[DCFusor]

I also despise Oracle, but there's no need to lie about how bad they are or why, there's plenty already, and internal pay inequality is not even the biggie.
Funny, I'm white, male, all that. And being mostly the best engineer I'd ever met, the rate of my pay and promotions always seemed unfair to me - had I been one of those other - person of color, wrong sex, whatever - I'd have been sure there was discrimination. And no reasoning would have convinced me otherwise. This observation is to me, quite eye-opening. I'm now out of the game and old enough to look back with a little less ego in it and see why things were the way they were in my own career (which was quite successful in the end).
I was brash, a bit of a prick, bad people skills, immature...but technically a fantastic engineer otherwise. I had zip for social and negotiating skills, only bothered to be nice to others I felt might be worth it and who might help me up the ladder, in other words, I was a real asshole.
And people put up with it because I delivered the goods, technically, but I'm pretty sure they didn't like it. It's embarrassing now to look back on in some ways.
.

My point is, if there is one, that if you're too close to a situation, it's hard to be an honest judge of it. If you go in with an agenda, no hope of finding truth. And in my own case, yeah, I was "discriminated against" and for damn good reasons, they just didn't have anything to do with my "identity" or "class" as people now would divide things up to make conquering easier. I'm so grateful I wasn't anything but white, but not for the reason that white males did better - there was still only one person at the top, after all - and that was the big issue, there's not much top, and to be there you have to have more than one thing working right. Had I been one of those "repressed" identities, I'd be dead sure to this day that my failure to get to the top super fast was discrimination, patriarchy, totalitarianism, favoritism, cronyism, whatever. Nope...it was that the world isn't, and probably shouldn't be, a pure meritocracy in some narrow definition of that concept. Sure, I was one of the best EE's ever - but that's not all there is to merit in an engineering job, not by a very long shot. Doh!

Re:Perspective

[DCFusor]

Livius - I realized on reading my own post I wasn't clear - you weren't lying at all, the story on the other hand...

Re:Perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap! meant to click "Underrated". Accidentally hit "Overraged". Sorry!! CTRL-Z CTRL-Z CTRL-Z

Negotiating skills, require masculinity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Every woman wants to blame discrimination and yet you will never get a single one of them to admit they're simply not as good at negotiating.

Ironically good negotiating skills require the very same masculinity feminism is looking to wipe off the face of the planet.

Re: Negotiating skills, require masculinity.

[GhostBond]

I really think this is spread just to make men and women argue. I see very few people negotiating whether they're men or women. When I see men leave jobs for higher paying ones it's often via prodding from their wife pushing them to do it.

Re: Negotiating skills, require masculinity.

[Anonymous Coward]

I started a job at 110k/55hr only to tell the boss 4 months later that I was having another kid, used to make 150k/75hr, and my wife wanted me to leave and go find that again.

I did this right when I was the main developer on an in house product as a key player. I got a raise to 140k overnight.

Years ago when younger I pulled a fake emotional "leaving the state since I cant find more money" rant and instantly upgraded from 80k to 100k at a previous employer.

I was once stuck at the same place making 70k for almost four years. My male attitude had me screaming at someone who blocked the work driveway to the building parked sideways as I was late for a meeting. She got me fired. Without that I would probably still be there earning 70k.

Point is sometimes negative qualities also promote people. If I was polite I would have never gotten anything.

Another reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another reason not to hire woman.

Women have to push for what they want

[magzteel]

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.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[avandesande]

I think this is more about age then sex- it's well known that your earning potential slides when you go past 50. Employers don't want to invest in older employees.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[avandesande]

Also this story sounds hokey- I haven't physically seen a 'pay stub' in 20 years.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: In the US, Oracle employees can choose between direct deposit and paper checks.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

which doesn't mean they don't exist. Maybe he asked for a printout because he had a complaint, maybe she was shoulder surfing while he was reading his email or opening the pay tracking software. Does it really matter.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[iCEBaLM]

Even though I get paid by a direct deposit, I still get a paper pay stub.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this is my experience exactly. I'm an engineer and my fiance is a scientist. She'd ask for a raise, and they'd say "performance reviews are in 6 months", and she'd be like "ok". We worked at the same company at the time, and when they told me that, I was like "well, you better find a way or you're going to have to hire someone new instead". My pay did go up, but eventually they replaced me with someone cheaper. Not a complaint, just a fact. I moved on to an even better job, and so on; consequently my pay has always been higher than hers, but my employment is always less "stable".

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[AmiMoJo]

Thing is the law says you can't discriminate based on gender, and just saying "one gender doesn't negotiate pay as well as the other" doesn't actually mean you didn't discriminate by taking advantage of that fact.

In other words employers are required to not rely on the individual's ability to negotiate pay, they are required to pay a fair amount even if they don't push hard for it. Same with increases, bonuses and promotions.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[The Evil Atheist]

Women are pushing for what they want. They're just doing it through the courts. If you don't play fair, why should they play fair? Play fair, and women wouldn't have to go to the courts.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[magzteel]

I think this is more about age then sex- it's well known that your earning potential slides when you go past 50. Employers don't want to invest in older employees.

I'm well past 50 and I've never had an issue demanding the comp I want. If anything I've had a lot of practice doing it.
If you aren't willing to take risks you will not get rewards.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[magzteel]

If you hire a contractor who quotes you X, do you instead pay them 2X? Of course you don't.
In fact, you get multiple bids and take the lowest one that you believe will product the best work.

There is nothing discriminatory in paying someone what they think they are worth.

The advice is the same for everyone:
Negotiate for what you want, especially when getting hired. It could take years to get a title you could have had from day 1.
Change jobs if you aren't getting what you want.
Change jobs in any case. You get new challenges and usually a bigger increase than you would have gotten at the previous place.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you REALLY think a company is going to say "yanno, Bob negotiated for $15k higher than you" when Sally states what she wants to be paid? It's not discrimination to give someone what they ask for. Please tell me you do not currently have any children or plan on having any.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

"more... then"...

Why are Americans so unbelievably stupid?

Do you not know what the words "then" and "than" mean? A three year old should know that, but apparently most Americans don't.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

What they want, and what they deserve, are not necessarily the same thing.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is the law says you can't discriminate based on gender, and just saying "one gender doesn't negotiate pay as well as the other" doesn't actually mean you didn't discriminate by taking advantage of that fact.

Hmm. Do you actually believe what you wrote above to be true? Truly?

In other words employers are required to not rely on the individual's ability to negotiate pay, they are required to pay a fair amount even if they don't push hard for it.

Nonsense. With equal rights come equal responsibilities.

Surely you are not suggesting that women are not able to negotiate for themselves? Or that they are somehow less capable of doing so than men are?

Same with increases, bonuses and promotions.

Nope.

I am for true equality.

Anyone who can perform a certain task, according to the requirements for said task, is by definition applicable for the task in question. Race, gender, religion or any other non-task-related factor is irrelevant. This applies to military service, sports, engineering, medical professions, and so on. Everywhere.

For example, if a woman can do everything required to be a fire-fighter, including rescuing a full-grown male adult from a burning building, than that woman is fit for the job and should be considered for it. If a man is unable to rescue the same full-grown male adult from the same burning building, than that man is not fit for the job. And vice-versa.

This holds equally for responsibilities. If getting the salary one wants to get requires negotiation skills for everyone, then so be it. Gender, etc. should play zero part in the equation. Otherwise you end up with something which is not gender-agnostic, hence not equal. If the pay-grade is decided solely based on experience and acceptable output, then the pay should be the same for the same combination of experience and output and nothing else.

Positive discrimination is still discrimination.

I don't care one iota about the gender (physical or perceived) of my co-workers. That they do their job and are otherwise decent human beings are the things that matter.

I fail to see why all of this can be such a huge thing for so many. We *are* all human beings, after all.

Re: Women have to push for what they want

[Anonymous Coward]

In a civilized society, we have principles of fairness and equality. Ideally nobody has to âoepush forâ these rights. Thatâ(TM)s like âoesorry slave/infidel, you just didnâ(TM)t push hard for your rights.â

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[LordAba]

Thing is the law says you can't discriminate based on gender, and just saying "one gender doesn't negotiate pay as well as the other" doesn't actually mean you didn't discriminate by taking advantage of that fact.

In other words employers are required to not rely on the individual's ability to negotiate pay, they are required to pay a fair amount even if they don't push hard for it. Same with increases, bonuses and promotions.

A woman can't help her gender anymore than a man can. A woman can take negotiation classes. Women who take negotiation training tend to have better starting salaries than men with poor negotiation skills.

Re:Women have to push for what they want

[The Evil Atheist]

Irrelevant. As people here have argued, they have to push for what they want. And this is them doing it. Don't like them playing by your rules? Tough shit. You don't get to complain when your ruleset backfires on you.

MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention women are a huge liability factor in business now. No man wants to be alone for any thing more than a brief moment with a women in the work place. Men have to walk on egg shells around them, lest they become the victim of another #metoo fiasco. Just an accusation is enough to fuck over a man's career and cause a whole distraction from business in the workplace.

God forbid you make a female coworker feel left out cause you didn't invite them out for an after work round of brews with the guys. You invite them and it just become awkward because if some accusation is made while a bunch of people were inebriated, You don't invite them and it causes a whole shit ton of work place drama that they are being singled out, the team isn't embracing them or some other such bullshit.

Re:MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, so many women waiting until they are older to breed is resulting in more retards getting born. Biology doesn't care how empowered one feels...

Re:MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas males can reproduce with relative impunity, since they don't have to carry to term or nurse, and maybe even not have to change diapers.

How the fuck does horseshit like the parent get modded up as Insightful?

(BTW, I am male, married, and have offspring.)

Re:MGTOW

[HornWumpus]

You can't even go to the nudie bar at lunch with coworkers without some bitch getting her panties into a bunch.

When the women finally figured out what 'free lunch'* ment, there was hell to pay.

* nudie bar promotion, nobody ate it. But did lead to conversations like 'Free lunch? Can't, ball and chain is watching my funds. You poor bastard!'

Re: MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame biology you man hater.

Sounds like your wife has you by the balls. Or should I say, she has the balls while you follow behind her and cheer.

Re:MGTOW

[JustNiz]

>> (BTW, I am male, married, and have offspring.)

Then just know that if you haven't done your equal share of getting up in the middle of the night to change a diaper, you suck as a father and partner.

Re:MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

(BTW, I am male, married, and have offspring.)

Well that's a shame. Your post provides evidence for requiring breeding licenses. Based on your post, it's clear you flopped a steamer in the gene pool

Re:MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're content to attack the messenger without knowing anything about him, then you're the one who sucks.

Re: MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're a perfect example of a sexist asshole. (And, like JustNiz, you know nothing about me, either.)

Re:MGTOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Breeding licenses is one thing I would totally be behind, having to prove you have taken parenting courses, that you have financial means to raise a kid without becoming a public assistance leech. You have to be licensed to do damn near about anything else that could affect someone elses life, why not something that affects you successfully breeding and raising an upstanding future citizen that will provide for society rather than be a continuation of the ghetto leach mentality.

It's observable women got less pay, yes? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

It's observable women got less pay in this & other instances, yes? Correlation = causation (& the cause is women themselves accepting less).

* That's how I see it & how it is apparently. WE ARE LITERALLY OBSERVING IT HAPPENING!

APK

P.S.=> For anyone that's "jockeyed for jobs" especially bids & contracting (which I did for decades in the computer sciences), it's competition & "necessity IS the mother of this invention" (you accept lower pay due to a lower threshold of pain &/or acceptance, it's on you (& I've had to do it myself - we pretty much ALL have to - bills/taxes/insurances/food + water etc.))... apk

Re:It's observable women got less pay, yes? apk

[mark-t]

Except that you aren't literally observing it happening. You may be observing people who are women who have less inclination than men towards certain roles, but because you cannot actually *see* what causes a person's inclination, you cannot reasonably assume that the inclination which might be perceived happens to be biologically induced.

In fact, it is far more likely that to the extent that it does occur, such a leaning is the result of possibly unfair pressures that are placed on us as children to conform to societal norms, rather than as a direct consequence of any biology.

Similar jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to hear what "similar positions" constitutes.

You know, some actual facts, with your statistics, and reporting. Maybe some actual journalism. Last report I read like this grouped such large job groups together it was completely meaningless.

As others have said, if you factor in pay from maternity (and now paternity!) leave - childless employees (male and female) are getting completely douched over. And I get shit for taking a few days off.

Kill yourselves now, SJWs !!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Life is not fair.

Life never will be fair.

Face it, as an SJW pussy snowflake, you won't ever be able to deal with this reality.

So the only correct answer for you is to kill yourself.

DO IT NOW.

YET AGAIN

[monkease]

SLASHDOT USER: Science, logic, and math are the only valuable forms of human endeavor, and those that employ them are elevated above the teeming, irrational masses.

ALSO SLASHDOT USER: If statistics say that women have it bad, statistics is wrong! Understand, you've got to look at all these other factors about specific women's specific circumstances, and anyways, there is no chance a single company has a culture that would undervalue them! Plus, I knew a woman once and she was a bitch and made mistakes!!

Re:YET AGAIN

[Pinky's Brain]

Non straw man Slahsdot user here :

Market good, let market figure it out. All discrimination between private citizens should be 100% legal, because proof based on statistics and poorly founded assumptions of some fucking academics will never be anything but biased bullshit. The civil rights act was a gigantic mistake.

Re:YET AGAIN

[_Sharp'r_]

Let me introduce you to a phrase Mark Twain made popular. It's pretty old, as is the knowledge contained in books like this.

Re:YET AGAIN

[monkease]

Welp, I guess you just totally 100% proved that no macro-level knowledge can ever really be known, and is probably wrong!

I'm imagining a patternless world, in which every trend is resisted by nature itself, as if reality were alive and conscious and completely devoted to arbitrariness. Because you've convinced me: no fucking way can it be ever possible that any organization in the past or future histories of this world could devalue women's work.

I feel so awed by your encyclopedic literary knowledge, and daunted (yet excited; bursting!) to dare approach collections of words people have written--these objects you deem "books." Thanks, pal. You really gave me a gift here.

Re:YET AGAIN

[monkease]

Duuude. Your near-religious faith in a concept called "market," your blanket disavowal of academia, and your guarantee that every instance of statistical finding and academic theory will prove to be "biased bullshit" is so amazing to me I wish I could go delete the second part of my original comment and replace it with what you've written here. Good show!

Women are weak

[Anonymous Coward]

and they must be protected with the tools of the state to ensure they are given equal treatment.

I am glad world finally has realized women are helpless

It is only a lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

This lawsuit will be dismissed, no matter the soundbites and catchy heading. It will be presented in court that alleged gap does not exist when actual responsibilites and experience are factored in. Wage gap is a myth. On the contrary, in the USA it has been shown that, on average, women earn more for the same competence, work and results than men.

Re: So, basically women less good at negotiating

[GhostBond]

High School: Look at those neeeerds playing computer games
College: You're a...computer science major? (looks dubiously at me)
2015: I'm a woman who did a 6 month boot camp, why am I being payed less than you? Also can you show me how this stuff works? If you need genuine info from me though I'm just to busy.

I'm not rooting for those people

[rsilvergun]

you've completely misread my point to make a straw man (e.g. you're attacking my supposed defense of people who support the equal pay movement when I've done the opposite, I've attack the movement as nonsensical).

Yes, there are some rubes on the left who have fell for the equal pay garbage. Even Bernie Sanders gets into it. People on my side can be wrong. You'll note that Bernie doesn't bang on about it much. It gets a passing mention. His main goal right now is and has been Medicare for All and a living wage. So he gets my vote.

Now, if you want to talk about folks using identity politics to divide and conquer, that's your "Clinton" Democrats or "New" Democrats (as they like to call themselves). That's your Pelosis and your Chuck Schumers. Those folks suck and can go to hell.

But I don't care that they're Democrats. That doesn't matter. What matters is always, always, _always_ policy. The Clinton Dems are on the right wing. Doesn't matter if they've got a D next to their name, they're pro-corporate, anti-worker right wingers. That's what matters. They oppose me and mine. I've got friends with medical conditions they woulda let die. I am not nor have I ever defended their policy views. I might swallow my bile to vote for one (I voted for Clinton herself) because I'm not a child and there really _is_ such a thing as the lessor of two evils, but that doesn't mean I support or defend them.

Stop putting words in my mouth and wake up. You're being used by the American ruling class governing from the right wing. They'll eat you alive. If you happen to die before they do they'll eat your friends and family. The only way to win with them is to be one of them (and if you're posting on /. you're probably not) or to die with no friends and no family left behind. That's not a life fit for anyone...

Re:I'm not rooting for those people

[feepness]

I might swallow my bile to vote for one (I voted for Clinton herself) ... but that doesn't mean I support or defend them.

Voting for someone is the literal definition of support.

Can I sue strip clubs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally they pay their overweight male strippers a lot less than they pay slim 20 year old females.

Also they generally discriminate against both sexes as you get past a certain age. However old folks are not protected so I guess it is OK.

To be a 1/2 african american 1/2 latino american homosexual female with 1 parent being Jewish and 1 parent Islamic would place me on the very very tippy top of the Social Justice Food pyramid. All others would be inferior to me.

According to Darwin we should be breeding these folks like crazy.

So for now on Only Blacks and Latinos will be allowed to reproduce, but they need to do it through artificial insemination. We should all know that female on male fornication is 100% rape all the time.

In an effort to create a world free of injustice, we have created a perfect hell hole that nobody wants to live in. Witness the drugas epidemic

Upbringing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about sex, its about upbringing and drive to succeed.

I'm sure if you compared the incomes of Alpha Males to Soy Boys you would find similar discrepancies.

Re:Upbringing

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, in a generation the whole issue will sort itself out once there are few Alphas left and average of male income is brought down to woman's level with the proliferation of Soy Boys

The problems of the well-off but greedy.

[edris90]

You're making salary? So you're doing better off than most of country. Rest of us are working hourly , when we don't show up to work we get paid less .when you don't show up to work doesn't matter. Unless you wasted your money on lavish luxuries like not having to cook for yourself, avoiding learning how to maintain your own equipment and oversized properties, you should be sitting pretty with savings accumulating. This gender more is just another mechanic to increase the wealth of those who already have more than others despite working less hard

We are observing women being paid less, period

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & I've taken logic & did well: Have you? I did so during CS degreework (tough for you to prove as anon UNIDENTIFIABLE troll, now isn't it? Yes, lol).

* Don't even TRY your FORUMS "Illogic-logic" on me you disgusting worm HIDING from me by AC posts.

APK

P.S.=> Your types brain is ALL "F'd UP" from birth what w/ the "NEW NORMAL" crap (your type will ALWAYS lose - it's ALL your kind CAN do)... apk

Re:We are observing women being paid less, period

[Zontar The Mindless]

Shouldn't you be posting some Knights Templar copypasta, or did you forget the keyboard shortcut for that again?

Come back to me when the verdict is in

[Anonymous Coward]

I know we live in a culture where the merest accusation from a woman is treated as a guilty verdict, but our legal system still operates under the 'antiquated' innocent until proven guilty standard.

For years women in general (and feminists in particular) have been decrying the 'wage gap' to which most of the rest of us in the real world argue several points against it's existence as portrayed by the activists.

Now here we get one of the common arguments against the 'wage gap': it's already illegal to pay women less than men for identical work because they are women. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 saw to that.

So now we are at the next stage; these people believe they are being discriminated against based on their sex and have filed a class action lawsuit to that effect.

Now let the courts do their job and adjudicate this claim. When the verdict/judgement is in, then you can write all the articles you want about it. Till then, it's just another unproven accusation just like so many others we've seen in the modern era.

Grow the list

[datavirtue]

Add this the likely pile of Oracle human atrocities.

What's more likely...

[iCEBaLM]

.... a company actively wanting to pay women less, or women not asking aggressively for raises because they're more agreeable?

If it's the second option, whose fault is it?

Re: So, basically women less good at negotiating

[phantomfive]

That is true, now that you mention it. I did get looked down on as being a nerd for choosing computer science. I'll bet when a girl chooses computer science, her girlfriends REALLY make fun of her.

Other Industries

[Anonymous Coward]

In the porn industry, males are paid far, far, far less than the females. Where are all of those lawsuits?

Re:Other Industries

[LordAba]

Same in the modelling industry in general. The top female models make WAAAAAAY more than the top male models.

Let me get this right....

[BlueCoder]

"Oracle" underpaid the market rate. So these women could have quit and been hired elsewhere at the market rate? Isn't that a choice? If they could not have made more money then then they are paid the market rate.

You have all these supposedly underpaid people... sounds like a business opportunity to me. Any business person that likes to make money will jump at the chance to hire them at slightly more money. They would be stupid not to and must hate women more than money.

Where are all the business women creating all women businesses? If women are equally productive then business women can hire these women away at half the salary difference. Women could buy stocks in such companies since such businesses would be at an advantage. Anyone that likes money would invest this way.

The truth is women as a whole are indeed less productive at SOME things. All big businesses have a spreadsheet that calculate what each employee is worth. There are businesses that do these calculations for businesses based on all sorts of historical data as well as current performance data. As it is I speculate most tech business pay women slightly more than their performance is worth simply to increase their diversity numbers. And there is more than just performance to each employees value. There are training costs and prediction of how long a person might stay with the company. How much overtime do salaried people do? The more women you have the more "he said she said" suits you will have; men don't initiate the suits. These are costs.

Women in the workplace

[Quzak]

How much are these woman actually worth? Do they actually perform meaningful labor compared to their male counterparts? Seriously, how much can someone who makes coffee, answers phones and gives blow jobs be worth? Those women should be happy to simply be employed and to be in the presence of men who tolerate them, especially in this metoo nonsense.

This article allows me to OBSERVE it

[Anonymous Coward]

This article allows me to OBSERVE it - or, is it lying? Anyhow, I'm not here to "quibble semantics" or philosophize on this bullshit really - this site has gone way, Way, WAY too "SJW" & stuff that's not really "news for geeks" imo & that of MANY others.

APK

P.S.=> Doesn't matter to me really - I no longer work for my money, my monies work for me & for the last 12++ yrs. now I haven't HAD to work for ANYONE, but myself (goal you should ALL pursue & achieve imo & experience - it's WAY better)... apk

Re:This article allows me to OBSERVE it

[mark-t]

I am suggesting that what you might be observing does not constitute any proof that any observed inclination towards or away from particular technical careers among women is biologically caused.

Even if this sort of correlation between sex and career were observed 100% of the time, it would not be proof of an actual biological cause when there are numerous other factors that could produce the same results.

The fact that how frequently any such correlation can even be readily observed is actually much less than 100% only further suggests that biology is unlikely to be such a causative factor.

Re:This article allows me to OBSERVE it

[Vanyle]

You are observing the effect not the cause. You see a class of people who are under paid and are making the assumption that it is due to their gender. The cause could be that the women who decide to work instead of have a family are hard to work with, not team players? Maybe they gossip all the time and get into trouble? I don't know.

Did you know ice cream sales and murders both rise at the same time? It must mean that ice cream causes people to kill other people, right?

We had this problem with tobacco for a long time. They couldn't definitively prove that it caused cancer as any number of factors could have led someone to smoke that also caused cancer, such as stress. They eventually found a way around this by doing a study where they had participants quit smoking.

Maybe someone should do a study of post op patients and see if the salary of male - female ones go down and the female - male ones go up?

how many variables?

[Anonymous Coward]

same number of hours worked?
same amount of overtime?
same amount of leave?
same amount of sick days?
same length of service?

Women are Poor negotiators

[Anonymous Coward]

Women are Poor negotiators. Argue for higher salary and you'll get it.

California

[Anonymous Coward]

IT workers in California fall in a funny area where they are, by definition, non-exempt (i.e. get OT) up to around $90k/yr.

However, you are neglecting the exemption applies to managerial, professional, or administrative functions - you've correctly identified management - essentially hire/fire authority over more than 2 people qualifies you as a manager and exempt. However the "professional" exemption is the one where most IT people will wind up - that would be anyone with "advanced education and training" - which is essentially a college degree - the law was written when 10% of people had a degree, and the court cases tend to follow that, even today. Most places will actually consider "fresh-out" hires with a degree as non-exempt for 2-3 years, just to make sure.

Similar is not "the same"

[Anonymous Coward]

The identifier that this is a bogus lawsuit is the use of the term "similar". This isn't about actual discrimination against individuals working the same job, working the same hours for the same period of years.

This is an attempt to claim discrimination for "work of equal value" which is a completely subjective position.

Equal pay immediately:

[Qbertino]

Wave your magic wand and have "access to income and resources" drop off the selection matrix of hetero women for hetero men and the pay gap will go away instantly.

But since that all is due to evolution and it's long term strategy, I doubt this will happen any time soon. As long as Daniel Craig carrying a baby around is "unmanly" and men without career biographies are measurably more unattractive for long term relationships things will stay the way they have been since the dawn of time.

If we can design a Utopia that can cater both to men and women without either feeling discriminated, that would be cool, but that also requires us to accept a certain degree of biological differences. That is present with classic feminism, but not so much with today's hashtag and gender studies camp.

However, I see this more of a fad that will go away soon and have us back on track with reasonable expectations when it comes to equality.

Overpaid Men?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems if Women , aka competition, working for less there was malfeasance of management to over pay men. Perhaps gender bias. Shareholders should sue. Larry can sue himself;).

Why didn't Oracle hire ONLY women then?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was able to save so much money by employing women, surely the entire workforce of Oracle would rapidly become all female?

Re:Why didn't Oracle hire ONLY women then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so much, they need top engineers for such a product.

Similar Same

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

So they even admit that they do not do the same amount of work just similar.

Someone making $87,000 a year is similar to someone making $100,000 a year when you factor in maternity leave, experience and the fact men typically work more overtime than women.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf

Sort it out and let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

Whip out the performance reviews and hours worked, do a blind comparison, and see what happen. I'm curious to see if Larry's crew squeaks by on this. Not that I assume guilt or innocence, nor do I harbor high expectations of justice either way.

Re: So, basically women less good at negotiating

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing too is that college is inherently structured for the learning style of women.

That IS the point!

[Roger W Moore]

That's IS the point! Women working at Oracle are self-selected for being interested in technology! Hence, the studies looking at technological interest in women as a whole DO NOT APPLY!

Systematically underpaid?

[mnmn]

If a woman is asking for a raise, or is negotiating salary in an interview, if she is shown the company pay categories in a chart that is different from men, that's systematic. If say a man in a similar title and region is shown the salary chart that shows his pay can be in the $45k-$55k range, but the woman is shown a different chart showing $40k-$50k, that would be totally systematic, illegal, and morally wrong.

However if each employee is pushed back with "this is as far as we're willing to go", and the company waits and sees who will bluff leaving, that's not systematic.

Instead of forcing companies to override normal business behavior for women even when they're businesses and general capitalism dictates that they only maximize their profits, the root cause of this issue must be tackled. You can't seriously force businesses to tell women (or visible minorities, or the disabled) "oh you just want $45k, I think we'll just give you $55k because one man with the same title has $55k". In reality the business would rather split the title (Jr, Sr) or make it look like the woman has a slightly different job responsibility.

The real underlying issue is the confidence that the woman can find another job should this one go away. And that she will survive easily if she loses this job. This further depends on if she has a large mortgage or is a single mother of kids or has other dependancies. Perhaps her social circle is important too. Just as women are encouraged by peers to "leave him" when she's having relationship issues, men are encouraged to leave the job when they're unhappy. This really isn't businesses' fault and cannot be fixed by patching the symptoms by forcing more money through businesses which are designed to only maximize profit.

In fact, it should be offensive to suggest that a particular disenfranchised group needs government mandated policies to be equal to the modal group, in productivity OR benefit. This would technically imply that group is inferior.

There is no wage gap

[maxbuzz]

feminists just can't do math.

Shitty argument is shitty

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying women less DOES benefit them, dumbass. They would fuck the guys over more if they could, but we won't put up with your bullshit. The majority of women understand they are subserviant (in this current culture) and simply take what they can get, which is better than nothing.

omg people

[Anonymous Coward]

Just stop hiring women! They only cause trouble about wages, harrassment, etc. Only men environments are healthy work environments.

Half good

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other side, they overcharged all of their customers, regardless of who they were.