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Google Found it Paid Men Less Than Women For the Same Job (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The story we're used to hearing is that women get paid less than men. In Google's case, according to its own internal pay audit, it turned out male-identified Level 4 Software Engineers received less money than women in that same role. That led to Google paying $9.7 million to adjust pay for 10,677 employees. It's not clear how many of the employees who received pay adjustments were men but Google does cite the underpaying of men as a reason for why the company paid more in adjustments for 2018 than in 2017. But The New York Times reports men received a disproportionately higher percentage of the money.
Google is actively trying to increase the diversity of their workforce. That means they are discriminating for under represented groups. Differences in pay are the easiest way things are subsidized / discriminated for.
In the supply of Level 4 Software Engineers, I'd actually think that Google would have to pay females significantly more than males to attract them, since they are almost certainly represented in the pool of Level 4 Software Engineers much less than men. Rare attributes are more expensive than common attributes.
It's not possible to treat people equally, and try to increase the diversity of a workforce that draws from an uneven pool of people. If 9/10 CS graduates are men, then why would companies be expected to have anything other than a 9/10 distribution in their workforce? When the expectations are different, then there has to be some sort of discrimination / subsidy in effect.
Isn't this basic economics, combined with basic statistics?