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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.
Salary is not simply a function of the job. It also depends on your resume and experience. Seems completely possible to me that a 4% difference could simply be explained by the opportunity cost of maternity leave.
Correlation is not causation. There is no proof that the pay difference is caused by gender discrimination as opposed to performance.
Study after study has shown that women are biologically less inclined in technology and obviously they would be less productive in a high-tech company
Sorry but that does not logically follow at all. Just because it is rarer for women to be interested in technology it does not mean that those individual women who are interested are any less skilled it just means that there are fewer of them. Your point could explain why Oracle hires more men than women but not why it pays them less.
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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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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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.
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.
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.
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.........