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
under a parent company called Alphabet.
To shed light on pay
differences if any in the company.
OUTLINE
Abstract 2
Introduction
4
Legislation
4
Background
5
Googlers
6
Google
Accusers
6
Issues
7
Effects
Way
Forward
Reference
10
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-1990. “The discriminatory-pay
laws is inclusive of all monies given to 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 renumeration 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.” (Google, 1998)
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.
GOOGLERS
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. Google being a learning organization
takes the lead in workplace design, organizational structure and so on.
GOOGLE’S ACCUSERS
Despite Google’s
released statement that “Yearly, they perform a full and robust analysis
of pay across genders and they have
found no pay gap," (Politi). There have been fingers pointed at
the tech giant’s pay practices with regards to parity or no parity among
different genders within the company.
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)
“ Google argued,
and won, a court ruling in July2017 contending
the DoL had no evidence of inequitable pay and was asking for too much
data. The agency wanted 15 years worth of info and contact info on more
than 25,000 employees. The judge authorized less
data, including contact data for
8,000 employees” (Bort, 2017)
Natasha Lamb (activist-investor, 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 other large
firms like eBay, Intel, Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Expedia who had
complied. (Baron, 2017). Worthy to note, Facebook was the only other tech giant
not to comply, Lamb’s reason was concentrated voting of the above 50% of the
founder (s). To which Schmidt (C.E.O. of Google) responded with an emphatic NO
on behalf of shareholders who had repeatedly voted against the idea.
James Damore, a former
engineer and former employee for google released a damning memo about gender
bias that first circulated in-house then went viral. He claims to have written
this as a reaction to things discussed at a diversity workshop organized by
Google, in an interview with Stefan Molyneux, he further said Google should
strive to be a “female friendly environment”.
According to Susan
Wojcicki (Youtube CEO), the words of Damore, were “unfounded bias”, and that it would
have had less traction or made the news had portions of the memo with the word “females”
been replaced with “another group”.
Three people filed
against Google in September 2017, with a pay discrimination claim which was
dismissed three months later by a California court due to the non-specificity
of aggrieved group of people.
January 2018, these
plaintiffs added a fourth and filed a revised suit based on pay discrimination
in specific job roles like “engineering, management,
sales, and teaching”.
The last is
“Lamar claims that of the
150 teachers employed by Google during her tenure, just three were men. Two of
the men hired were paid more than all but one of the women hired, she alleges” (O’Brien, 2018).
In their
response, Google representative Ms Gina Scigliano said to CNNMoney that the
company disagrees with the central allegations of this amended lawsuit (O’Brien).
Most of these
occurred in the wake of this retrospectively grandiose release, “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, )
ISSUES AND EFFECTS
A resultant effect is reduced motivation to work, may lead
to absenteeism in the affected group.
Higher employee
turnover is the most likely corollary of the above in an organization, the
people being discriminated against or even those who perceive they are being discriminated
against will leave the company as employees are not loyal to employers they do
not trust.
Employees will also
leave if they do not see advancement prospects for example promotion,
recognition, delegation and so on.
Some years back when
Google observed and investigated its increased female employees’ exit from the
company to other companies, they found out their maternity package was not
competitive, so they adjusted it and plugged the outflow of talent they were hemorrhaging
“It is unlawful to retaliate
against an individual for opposing employment practices that discriminate based
on compensation or for filing a discrimination charge, testifying, or
participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under
Title VII, ADEA, ADA or the Equal Pay Act”
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,
WAY FORWARD
In organizations
plagued with pay discrimination, there should be a change, as Shaw succinctly
puts it, “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.
As with most organizational
plans, carrying out anything successfully requires management input, or even
spearheading, capable managers to lead the charge for a better future for all
stakeholders.
With how constant
change is according to Gibson et al (2012), it is the most frequently used word
on the business pages of every newspaper in the world’ hence managing change is
primary to the function of today’s efficient manager.
Google is no stranger
to employing experts or consultants; who know the stumbling blocks to
organizational change. These are employees’ lack of trust towards management,
employee’s self interest (instances where change is not to employee’s
advantage), difference in views if what the change is and can bring, fear
(shown as impatience not as what it is, fear of not fitting into the future the
change would bring) and so on.
On the part of the
employee, in instances where pay disparity is due to less/lack of “aggression”
as a study on the disparity between pay in male and female Uber drivers
explained that, “gender-based preferences can open gender earnings gaps,"
the authors said. Male Uber drivers apparently like to drive fast, not
necessarily to earn more, but because they are "more risk-tolerant and
aggressive" on the road by nature, the study found. Men gain an extra
earnings edge by working more hours on average, allowing them to learn more
quickly and target the best locations to pick up passengers” (Khoreva, 2018) hence,
could some Google female employees be more aggressive and outspoken in getting
ahead career-wise especially in instances where the other reasons for disparity
have been eliminated. YouTube C.E.O. Wojcicki, stated how, she even had to on
one occasion call and talk to a Silicon Valley old timer and mentor to get a
her into a conference career-wise she had earned a right to be in, but had not
been invited.
It is clear, this work
is not a one-man or in this case, one-company job, more has to be done on all
sides to close the pay disparity gap that is albeit lower than say four decades
ago but had almost ground to a halt in the amount of progress made in the
immediate past.
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
O’Brien
A. (2018, January 3) Google hit with revised gender
pay lawsuit
Accessed from
Khoreva, V. (2011)
Uber's female drivers earn less than men (but it's not what you think). Equality, Diversity and
Inclusion: An International Journal; Birmingham Vol. 30, Iss. 3, 233-248 Accessed from http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526998513/HWRC?u=lirn30069&sid=HWRC&xid=5f41e828.
Accessed on 2018, February 14th
Bort,
J. (2017, September 28th). An Activist Investor
Praises Apple, And Slams Google, Over Equal Pay For Women Transparency. The Business Insider Accessed from http://www.businessinsider.com/arjuna-capital-slams-google-over-equal-pay-for-women-data-2017-9
Gibson. Ivanosevch, Donnelly
& (2012) Organisation Behavior
Structure and Processus 14, Pp 488-494
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