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Oracle Systematically Underpaid Thousands of Women, Lawsuit Says (theguardian.com)
Thousands of women were systematically underpaid at Oracle, one of Silicon Valley's largest corporations, according to a new motion in a class-action complaint that details claims of pervasive wage discrimination. From a report: A motion filed in California on Friday said attorneys seek to represent more than 4,200 women and alleged that female employees were paid on average $13,000 less per year than men doing similar work. An analysis of payroll data found disparities with an "extraordinarily high degree of statistical significance," the complaint said. Women made 3.8% less in base salaries on average than men in the same job categories, 13.2% less in bonuses, and 33.1% less in stock value, it alleges.
The civil rights suit comes as the tech industries faces increased scrutiny of gender and racial discrimination, including sexual misconduct, unequal pay and biased workplaces. The case against Oracle, which is headquartered in Redwood Shores and provides cloud computing services to companies across the globe, resembles high-profile litigation against Google, which has also faced repeated claims of systematic wage discrimination.
The civil rights suit comes as the tech industries faces increased scrutiny of gender and racial discrimination, including sexual misconduct, unequal pay and biased workplaces. The case against Oracle, which is headquartered in Redwood Shores and provides cloud computing services to companies across the globe, resembles high-profile litigation against Google, which has also faced repeated claims of systematic wage discrimination.
Correlation is not causation. There is no proof that the inclination is caused by biology, nor the degree of productivity.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Equal opportunity doesn't mean equal results. There are tons of explanations that could account for the statistical difference that are not discrimination.
I recall reading about a company who's salary decisions were completely made by computer, which never knew anything about gender, and there was still a gender pay-gap. So the computer was "fired" (discontinued, same thing) for being sexist.
That said, it's still possible that there is discrimination going on that should be investigated, but it shouldn't be the default call-back.
A Navajo said it best, IMHO: "It is a sad time we live in where outrage is a recreational activity."
Salary is not simply a function of the job. It also depends on your resume and experience. Seems completely possible to me that a 4% difference could simply be explained by the opportunity cost of maternity leave.
Saves my business a lot of money when our employees will take a huge pay cut.
Correlation is not causation. There is no proof that the pay difference is caused by gender discrimination as opposed to performance.
Study after study has shown that women are biologically less inclined in technology and obviously they would be less productive in a high-tech company
Sorry but that does not logically follow at all. Just because it is rarer for women to be interested in technology it does not mean that those individual women who are interested are any less skilled it just means that there are fewer of them. Your point could explain why Oracle hires more men than women but not why it pays them less.
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.
Single women without dependents make 8% more than their male counterparts with same education and experience across the US, in large cities like Atlanta the pay gap is 21%
Women are 50% more likely to graduate from college.
Politifact rates it Mostly True solely because they can't find more recent statistics that disprove their narrative.
Over time, women (as a statistic) make different choices and prefer life over work. They tend to work less hours, take less overtime, are happier, live longer lives and don't die from work-related accidents or diseases (as in >1 percent of work-related deaths are female), they also make only 1-3% less over their lifetime than males (a statistic that reverses when you account for education and single motherhood) but that 3% makes all the difference as this wealth disparity is pretty much concentrated in the top 1%.
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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.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I choose to be optimistic, perhaps consequence of this mandatory gendered equal pay is that men will be allowed to "lean out" of crazy overtime and weekend hours that have been expected up to this point.
Americans are making 20% less than they used to (article says "Millennials" but I don't know about you but I took a paycut when the economy crashed in 2008).
Men and Women are now fighting among ourselves over 1-3% (a percentage that might just be due to men not taking time off for child rearing) while the ruling class is laughing all the way to the bank with that 20%.
This has been modus operandi for centuries: wedge issues. You find something to divide the working class into manageable chunks. Race, creed, sex. Hell, when the Japanese couldn't do it with race because they were all Japanese they made up classes based on jobs and kept books of them by name.
Don't fall for it. Demand better pay for all workers. Support the push for higher minimum wage. Vote in your primary for pro-Union, pro-worker candidates who refuse corporate PAC money. Demand all workers get healthcare that isn't tied to your job so you can switch jobs at will.
We've got bigger fish to fry than this. Don't get into the trenches with your fellow workers fighting while the rich laugh at you
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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.
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.
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.
Sticking your hand in a fire isn't correlation, it is direct observable cause
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.
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.
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).
/. you're probably not) or to die with no friends and no family left behind. That's not a life fit for anyone...
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
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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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
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!'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
So as long as you can bamboozle someone, it's all moral!
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.
Add this the likely pile of Oracle human atrocities.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Perhaps they aren't as aggressive when asking for raises, etc once they are employed?
That's not the companies' fault....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
>> (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.
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.
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.
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.
.... 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?
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.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"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.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
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.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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".
Let me introduce you to a phrase Mark Twain made popular. It's pretty old, as is the knowledge contained in books like this.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
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.
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.
Shouldn't you be posting some Knights Templar copypasta, or did you forget the keyboard shortcut for that again?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm assuming you're being facetious.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0095399716636928
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
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!
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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?
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.
Just another day in Paradise
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.
Just another day in Paradise
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!
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.
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.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
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?
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.
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.
feminists just can't do math.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Do women pay more for used cars?
If so, is this discrimination?
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.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Same in the modelling industry in general. The top female models make WAAAAAAY more than the top male models.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
The AC I was replying to was claiming a gender wide deficit in technology skills.
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.
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.
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"
Bullshit.. Sweden is our test case right now.. Maximum opportunity and maximum self segregation between the sexes in the labor force.
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.
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..
There are only laws against discrimination in specific situations against specific protected classes of people.
I hope you understand the hypocrisy of 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?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
Look up Norway
That's how it works in Europe, and we haven't turned Communist yet.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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
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.
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.
I have seen very little evidence for women being more or less insecure than men.
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.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
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...
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.
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.