Google tried to block media coverage of gender discrimination case
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
You really only understand how biased the media is once you've see it happen to your own employer.
EDIT: I mean that all companies will be bothered by the government, regardless of what they allegedly did or didn't do. Prosecutors will go to the press and risk causing extra damage to the reputation of the companies when a company refuses their fishing expedition.
With the current administration, I would just have expected less zeal. But sadly some things never change.
In an effort supposedly to combat sexism and racism, discrimination on the basis of gender and ethnicity is now normalized and practically codified. But equality of outcome still proves elusive, as it always will, so people say Google still hasn't gone far enough. It never will be able to satisfy such people.
But I think a huge amount of damage may be done in the process of trying, in the form of making gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, etc, more important when we want to be making progress toward a world in which those things are not considered very important at all.
There could be various reasons women are paid less which, from a business perspective, make some sense, e.g. the likelihood the business will lose its investment in the employee on account of her quitting work to raise children. By pressuring employers to pay women more than they assess them to worth, it may actually discourage employment of women and decrease diversity in the workplace. But surely it's some of both: women looked at individually do have some additional risk over your average man due to biology as well as the desire to actively mother children, AND women are unfairly (if unconsciously) discriminated against by men who assume they're less capable simply because they're women.
I actually feel pretty comfortable with per-job-code on-average pay equality between men and women. I think it's symbolically important, as well as acknowledging that simply having more female voices in the organization has worth in and of itself. But I would hope it could be enforced by social norms rather than requiring onerous government action.
"Is this down to nasty employers undervaluing female staff once they’ve had a baby or to outdated societal expectations that women are the main child carers?
"Or could it just be that many women who become mothers prefer to cut back their hours, work part-time, decline promotions, overtime and travel away from home so that they can see more of their children? Every survey suggests that women are doing this of their own free will but, hey, what do they know?" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12153967/The-gender...
It's a fact that only women can bear children. It's also a fact that women (for whatever reasons---not saying it's right or wrong) opt at a higher rate than men to reduce their hours or leave their career after the birth of a child. So, from a business perspective, there _are_ some additional risks associated with employing women that simply don't exist for men.
Women and men are different and in practice deal with parenthood differently as far as work is concerned. If there's ever to be equal pay for equal work, the discussion will have to include the issues as they are in addition to egalitarian ideals.
Also: http://www.nbcnews.com/better/careers/motherhood-penalty-can...
It seems right now that the choice faced by society is framed as binary: should we require equal pay across genders, or should we not? And each of these possibilities has both costs and benefits. Here are some costs and benefits of equal pay worth considering:
Costs: By requiring employers to pay women more than the employers assess to be their worth, fewer women will be employed, this at a time when gender ratios in many professions (especially IT!) are horrendously lopsided. Essentially, equal pay can be implemented as a price floor, meaning that the amount of female employment demanded will be less than it would at the natural equilibrium. Legislating equal pay might change some attitudes, but just entrench others.
Benefits: The women who are working get paid more. Society is seen as more just which likely alleviates angst all around. Women's voices are seen as more valuable because women are paid just as much as men, which disempowers sexists in their discrimination. More women will want to work at the higher price point, giving firms a better pool of applicants to choose from.
Invert these points to get costs/benefits of the status quo.
Both choices seem to incur both notable benefits and substantial costs. Surely there's some third way?
Why do these unrelated lawyers want access to Google's salary band data?
It looks like they're civil rights lawyers; they might want to use it as a tool in their own cases. I wonder why Google's data specifically would help them.
(edit) It's a string attached to government money, not an out-of-the-blue demand for records or a lawsuit on behalf of any particular person: