ABSTRACT
Gender equality/inequality
is a topic that has been discussed around tables for over a century, ever since
debates like women “expanding roles” from homemaker and caregiver to getting a
“right” to work, “right” to vote, “right” to hold political office et cetra. Movements
have spun out of these debates which have led to a push for and eventual
achievement of change in these topics. A corollary of this is the gender pay equality
endeavor, which pushes for the parity of pay among members of the different
sexes holding the same job roles and qualifications. This gender pay issue has
been pushed for by individuals, organizations, courts, governments and so on
for years, with varying levels of progress in different industries and
locations. The focus of this research is on gender pay equality/inequality in Google,
a limited liability company and technology giant headquartered in California
U.S.A..
To shed light on pay
differences if any in the company.
INTRODUCTION
Gender, for the intent
and purpose of this research is restricted to two, being male and female. While
pay is the commiserate payment made for work done by either or both members of
the gender. There have been various reports on pay disparity between male
workers and their female counterparts in general, but other studies show
further disparities in certain groupings for example race down to ethnic,
location/region, industry, age, educational qualification and such (Hill,
2017).
LEGISLATION
With respect to
legislation, gender pay parity is protected by several laws, the Title VII of
the Civil Rights Act – 1964, Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, The
Equal Pay Act of 1963 (signed by J.F.K.), Title I of the American Act of 1990. The laws
against discriminatory pay includes all payments given to or on behalf workers
as remuneration for employment. All forms of payments are covered, plus salary,
overtime, bonus, stock options, profit sharing and bonus plans, insurance,
vacation with leave pay, cleaning or gas allowances, hotel accommodations,
travel expenses refund and benefits.
Pay difference is fine in instances where there is earned
merit, rank, quantity or quality of production and factors other than
sex. (EEOC, 2017).
Closer to
home, Governor Brown signed into effect as of January 1st 2017, the
California Fair Pay Act, which put into law the paying of equal remuneration to
employees of different sex with substantially similar work, making it harder for employers to use a "bona fide
factor other than sex" defense.
In the U.S. according
to State report on annual earnings and full time earning for workers in 2016,
there is still a big lagging median gap of 20% between the female full time
worker and her male counterpart, with a range from 70% for women and 100% for
men in Louisiana and 89% for women and 100% for men in New York and all other
48 states fall in between: with California (Google’s headquarters) on 88% for
women, as second highest in the country.
BACKGROUND
Google LLC, a company
that started in 1998 as a search engine called “Backrub”
Google’s vision and
mission statement is Organizing the world's information and making
it universally accessible plus useful.
Which remains true,
from her unconventional décor to the customary colorful ambience, Googles has
maintained a style unique to itself, its proclamation to stakeholders and the
rest of the world is that of its core beliefs which has been to emphasize
an atmosphere of creativity and challenge (Page, 2004).
The organization financial
value post joining NASDAQ in 2004, it is worth 770.47 billion dollars. With a
staff strength of over 88,000 people in full-time roles, having hundreds of
offices worldwide, Google is the most visited website in the world. In a bid to
be different and continue their mission and vision, unorthodox is their norm.
Google is what is referred to as a learning organization, hence the company has
a large waiting list pool of people hoping to work in the place.
GOOGLE’s
Despite the glowing
accolades from a very diverse Google staff body, Googlers as they are called, Google has appeared over the past few
years in headlines that have to do with them paying female Googlers at a
different/lower rate from male Googlers.
The Department of Labor
released a statement about huge disparities in pay between gender, calling it “systemic”
as it is perceived to be company-wide. This is on the wake of a case against
Google in January 2017 asking the court to enforce the request to see the Tech
Giant’s payroll data.
All the more pressing
for DOL because Google is a government contractor hence it is bound by law to
submit to checks. In response, Google stated, the actions of D.O.L. are
“fishing” (Politi, 2017)
Despite Google’s
statement that “Yearly, they perform a full and robust analysis
of pay across genders and they have
found no pay gap," Google said in a statement.
“ (Politi)
“At Google, we don’t
just accept difference—we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for
the benefit of our employees, our products, and our community. Google is proud
to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.”
(Google, )
Natasha Lamb (managing partner in Arjuana) in
her statement to Alphabet (Google’s parent company) shareholders, accused them
of paying lip service to bridging the gender pay gap and sharing vital payroll
data for external audit of its pay structure unlike large firms like eBay,
Intel, Amazon et cetra who complied. (Baron, 2017).
According to Susan
Wojcicki (Youtube CEO), the words of the employee, were unfounded bias, and that it would
have had less traction had the parts with “females” been replaced wit “another
group”.
Gender pay gap can inhibit a
company’s ability to attract and keep top talent especially when it reports a
low percentage of female employees to male and even lower percentage of females
in leadership roles,
Carrying out a standard
salary audit, can help. “Progress is impossible without change,
and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Although Shaw
perfectly expresses how important change is, his quote doesn’t acknowledge how
hard it is to carry out
REFERENCES
EEOC Facts About Equal Pay and
Compensation Discrimination. Retrieved
from https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/fs-epa.cfm
California Equal Pay Act (2017,
October). Retrieved
from https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/California_Equal_Pay_Act.htm
Page L. & Brin S. (2004) 2004 Founders’ IPO
Letter Retrieved from An Owner’s Manual” for
Google’s Shareholders1 https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/2004/ipo-letter.html#_ga=2.187468008.1588571426.1519364786-2123570663.1519364786
Politi D. (2017, April 8) Department of Labor Accuses Google of “Extreme”
Gender Pay Discrimination, Accessed on http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/08/department_of_labor_accuses_google_of_extreme_gender_pay_discrimination.html
Baron E., (2017,
June7th) Google parent
Alphabet gender-pay proposal dead on arrival. Bay Area News Group. Retrieved
from https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/07/google-parent-alphabet-shareholders-shoot-down-gender-pay-report-proposal/
MacGregor J. (2017, August 9th).
One of Google’s highest-ranking women has answered that controversial
memo with a very personal essay. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/08/09/one-of-googles-highest-ranking-women-has-answered-that-controversial-memo-with-a-very-personal-essay/?utm_term=.4ba3e0d8692a
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